Grounded for All Eternity,  The Afterlife of the Party

Release Day! AFTERLIFE is out

July 19, 2023 /

I always underestimate the chaos of release day. Even when you don’t have a launch event planned, and quite honestly I never really fantasized about those when I dreamed of being an author, it’s a day of constant distractions. To be clear, they’re wonderful, amazing distractions as people receive their preorders and bookstores tag you for their New Release Tuesday posts, and your amazing writer friends send congratulations and share all those promo posts you send out into the ether. It’s a wonderful day, and while I started the day intending on getting some work done, who was I kidding? Work wasn’t getting done.

But my parents came by and we had a couple of bottles of champagne, and ordered Chinese food and it was wonderful. They also surprised my with a commissioned necklace from Dauphin Fine Art Glass, based on an early sketch by Nicholas Kole, of my little chaotic, running leaves from GROUNDED FOR ALL ETERNITY. I love my little guy! It was such a thoughtful gift and it was a perfect launch day.

It was also a great reminder to celebrate all of the wins. Publishing is hard and the process is long so it’s natural to be thinking of the next thing, but sometimes you really need to stop for a glass of champagne and cheer how far you’ve come.

Also in honor of the release of THE AFTERLIFE OF THE PARTY, the sequel to GROUNDED FOR ALL ETERNITY, I guest wrote a blog post for the School Library Journal, Teen Librarian Toolbox about an issue near and dear to my heart: The Importance of Unimportant Books. Go check it out!

“As authors, teachers, librarians, parents and trusted adults, we must encourage and help kids find their book, because while that book may be a window or a mirror, it is also a door to a much wider world.”

Darcy Marks is a lifelong reader who learned to walk quite well with a book in front of her face, thank you very much. She lives in Vermont with her husband, three genre-defying kids, a very needy cat and an extremely friendly former racehorse, where she writes rebellious fantasy books for kids. When she’s not reading or writing she explains math and science to lawyers as a forensic toxicologist and used her several black belts to help found The Safety Team, a non-profit changing the world and smashing the patriarchy one step at a time. She is the author of GROUNDED FOR ALL ETERNITY and other snarky books for kids.