Yes, it’s a bit unusual for me to blog twice within a few days. But, it happens.
Today I started the 2nd Vaporbyte launch cake. It’s a process. For this cake I used my Nana’s fruitcake recipe, it never fails and fruitcake lovers adore it. It’s my goto launch cake recipe.
Right now, the kitchen smells like spiced rum, orange juice, and dried fruit. Trust me, it is delicious.
The fruit will soak until tomorrow afternoon and then I’ll finish the cake batter and the whole massive cake (we’re talking a good 4 kilos of cake batter) will bake in a slow oven for around 4 hours. Once it’s cold (that’ll be sometime on Tuesday afternoon), it’ll be wrapped in a rum soaked tea towel, brown paper, and tin foil. It’ll join its pal (the ‘tropical’ fruitcake) in the cupboard until I’m ready to turn them into something that resembles a couple of books.
It’s a long process.
Because the launch maybe moved up I need to be ready. I suspect we’ll end up launching in September not Nov 10th as initially planned.
Seems like a long way away?
It really is not.
The thing that is going to fuck it all up is the NOT KNOWING. I can plan all I like to go early … but I need at least 4 weeks notice to get pre-orders organised, press releases out, venue, and invitations etc sorted. I do not know when the border with Oz will open. So I can’t put a date on anything physical yet.
I can make the cakes.
I can write the press release.
I can get all the website stuff ready.
I can get the pre-order info all written.
I can get marketing ready …
But without a date, it stops there.
Then I started thinking about it … all the pre-order business and whatnot can have a date because it’s got nothing to do with the physical launch. I can plan that to be digital and only digital. And not release the paperbacks worldwide until AFTER the physical launch here.
The biggest problem is my mind and feeling like I have zero control over anything. Perhaps I need to sit down with a pen and write my plan, bring all my dates forward and just go for it. Cake or no cake, plan a digital launch for the eBooks and worry about the physical/paperback and final Byte Series launch when we know more about borders …
I was going for Nov 10 (if you’ve been following along since the beginning of the series, 10 is a special number for daughter #4 and we’ve launch pretty well all the books on the 10th day of whatever month). Hold on to your hats, I’m leaning toward an online launch on Sept 10 followed by a physical launch with cake and prizes and fun shit. And that may even happen within days of the online shenanigans.

Now I suppose I should go work what that actually means … 🙂
FYI – Kindle Unlimited for the Byte Series ends on Aug 17th , so if you use KU and thought you’d read the series at some point, get on with it because it has time limit. 🙂