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For most authors, launching a new book is probably more a nerve-wracking experience than a celebratory occasion. Below, Frank Portman --- author of KING DORK --- shares how he conquered his case of release-date angst for his latest novel, ANDROMEDA KLEIN.

The most common advice you hear from writers about book release dates is a warning that the date itself can be a somber, deflating, anti-climactic day of mourning.

Sure, some books cause rioting in the streets and start wars and get in the paper and such, but most aren't so lucky: the date comes and goes, you get a note from your mom, your Amazon ranking remains on a par with someone's self-published book about how to sing to your dog, and you do a reading at a Barnes & Noble in a mall miles away from viable human settlements with an audience so small it couldn't riot its way out of a paper bag. You look at the rows of empty folding chairs and file the image in your head so it can be retrieved the next time you're in front of a mirror and used as supporting evidence when you tell your reflection: wow, you really suck.

So for the ANDROMEDA KLEIN release date, I was determined to distract myself and make it all okay, and the way I chose to do that was: stay away from mirrors. Also, to set up a crazy, complicated party involving a hodgepodge of unrelated people and a difficult-to-execute schedule in a small, claustrophobic space. And, throw it all together at the last second so that it has no chance of being covered by local press or listed anywhere, making it extremely unlikely that anyone will go, or even know enough about it to make an informed decision not to go as usual. The result was big ball of anxiety and panic that drove all thoughts of the feared release date let-down right out of my head.

And it turned out great. I'd recommend this approach to anyone who has an impending release of anything. It was a night of weird, beautiful, and perhaps slightly awkward, chaos, a real "happening."

We did it at Cato’s Ale House, where I hang out and wrote most of my two books. My friend Beth Lisick was the emcee. ANDROMEDA KLEIN is a portrait of a teenage occultist, so there was a magic/occult theme to the shindig (if shindig is the word I want). We handed out tarot cards as raffle tickets, and Becky Walsh the Stand-up Psychic chose one (The Moon) and quickly "read" the winner.

Jennifer Sky Band, billed as a witch poet/YA author/fairy person, came all the way up from Los Angeles to read some otherworldly poetry.

As for the magic of STALLION and his minions, Team Cherokee, that's pretty hard to explain. It's stage magic meets performance art, I guess, and perfect comedic timing was the secret to making his single four-minute trick (preceded by what seemed like ages of masterful tension-building commotion behind a curtain to music from the Rocky soundtrack) pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen. Basically, he lubed himself up and crawled inside a giant balloon and back out again. But somehow, it was so much more.

We also had some guest readers. Casey read some stuff about gnomes and sylphs from a 17th-century treatise on angel magic. Greg read from a translation of an 18th-century French text on "How to Gain Knowledge of Everything through the Medium of an Egg" (which apparently works even if the egg is rotten. He said he was going to try it.

Kari and Kayla each read a passage from ANDROMEDA KLEIN, and so did my pal Jesse Michaels from the band Operation Ivy and Classics of Love. (That’s Greg, Kari, and Kayla in the photo, practicing before their readings.)

Finally, I played the songs I’d written for the book (“Andromeda Klein” and “Bethlehem”) and an assortment of other songs. We were streaming it live via webcam, so I was able to take requests from the internet, which felt cool and “modern.”

All in all, a pretty good way to start out a book, as it turns out. So the next time someone asks me what to do about release-date angst, I’m going to tell them to fight anxiety with anxiety and panic with chaos. And play songs.

-- Frank Portman