Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing

Finally I blog about the launch party to celebrate the launch of Rayessa and the Space Pirates, my first longer form publication. Technically according to Romance Writers of Australia I am still unpublished because Rayessa is only 30,000 words and you need to publish at least 40,000 words I think to qualify. So I’m chasing that goal right now. I also don’t want to be a one hit wonder!

So Saturday night was the launch party. In the lead up I caught a virus/cold/nausea bug that laid me out. Nicole Murphy was suggesting that I postpone it. I was close to deciding to do so. Friday I was still sick in the morning but I started to come right in the afternoon. I also had ideas that I could supervise cake baking and meatball making etc.

Friday night I baked the UFO cake (not decorated) and the base for Yumi’s princess doll cake. Then I flopped into bed.

Saturday well we were all at it. Erana, my daughter, Nicole came at 10 am and Matthew was here. Flat out we were painting props, cleaning, decorating etc. Lucky I had bought a few things in the lead up. I had black sheets to cover my retro eyepopping curtains, painted cardboard tubes, glowing stars, a plasma ball light, disco ball. I ducked out for a red police light etc.

I had to buy the food so I was at Aldi at 8.30 waiting for it to open. Erana and Yumi (6) made the meatballs.

Here are a few shots of the result. Remember this is a kitsch SF, dilapidated space station setting. We figured that Rayessa would have done up this sign and put it at the entrance.

Then there was the entry. There is a bit of a story about the red tape. I got this set of 5 coloured masking tape from KMart. I tested it on the floor and it didn’t leave a residue. (story continues later).

I’m not sure it translates that well, but after you walk through a black crepe fringe with star shaped lights, you walked in here. I thought it looked awesome. Matthew did a great job on it.

Nicole painted wall panels and made signs. This was in the hall. Basically it’s a very defunct refueling post.

Everyone was getting into it. Nicole made this for the wall. I thought it was very cool. Matthew started getting ideas and there were signs going up everywhere and new funky things being created.

This is a shot of the black sheets covering the curtains and a glimpse of a sign done by Matthew and the power generator created by Erana.

Here is a close up of the generator. We haven’t broken it down yet.

I had created things for the sample bag. I couldn’t get out to buy bags so Erana’s mother-in-law Wendy gave me some bags from her shop. Then Erana got the idea to put a design on them at the last minute. She did a great job. Inside was a small can of baked beans, a sample of hard tack (not as hard or as big as it should have been), a highlighter pen (my other daughter asked me why there was a pen shaped like a tampon in the bag), a little pack of smarties (protein pills), a glo stick bracelet, a space food stick (not shown), a Rayessa postcard, a welcome to Outpost 311 (like on Rayessa’s blog) and her Emergency Checklist.

Here are a couple of tubes. This may be arranged post party. I painted those and I thought it was fun. I had visions of doing movie props and then I tried painting something important and came back down to earth.

The food had a theme too. Asteroids, because Outpost 311 is in the asteroid belt, with a smattering of outpost possible food. I also wanted to cater for friends who were vegetarian, gluten intolerant or lactose intolerant as much as possible. I also didn’t want to go overboard.

So we had beef as well as chicken asteroids (meatballs gluten and lactose free), vegetable asteroids (jacket potatoes) and sweet asteroids (gluten and lactose free chocolate crackles)

We had mining shaft moss ( avocado dip), scum from the reclamation unit (a mustard aioli), spume from the air filter tanks (sour cream) and some other spicy salsas.

Then we had chili beans, green beans, brocolli and mineshaft fungus (mushrooms), lettuce leaves and tomatoes.

This actually was quite filling. And there was the UFO cake.

Drinks. This wasn’t my idea. I wanted to buy a punch bowl with little glasses, but Matthew said you have to serve the punch out of a bucket, one marked with the hazchem symbol.

So,

Alcohol was in the hazchem bucket (vodka, a cranberry juice, sparkling grape juice). It was purplish.  The red bucket had a mango and apple juice with lemon sparkling mineral water. It was quite refreshing.

I had a great bunch of people over to help me celebrate the launch of the book. I’d been at this writing gig for 12 years. I didn’t think Rayessa would be the first thing I published, but there you go, you never know. I wasn’t planning on a ‘launch’ per se, rather a celebration. However, Nicole snuck in to my study and printed out an excerpt of the book and I read a bit. I had a lucky door prize, which was a Millennium Falcon USB  memory stick with a copy of my book. However, the USB memory stick did not work. It was bust (I must speak to Think Geek), so I gave one of my Rayessa mugs away and emailed a copy of the book to Sharon Ding, the lucky winner. Nicole had also organised a pass the parcel. It was hilarious what she had people doing. The prize was a three foot long green tentacle. Bob Phillips won that but I think there was some angst because others coveted it.

I had a great time and caught up with some lovely friends. Some couldn’t make it at the last minute. So sad. A big thank you to Cat Sparks and Rob Hood who drove from Wollongong (2.5 hours away). You can see Cat’s photos here.

The party could not have happened without the dedication and hard work of Nicole Murphy, Erana Loftus and Matthew Farrer. Thank you all.

Because I was sick I didn’t get a chance to get a poster printed, but here is the cover again.

Ps. That red tape issue. Well this is what happened. I lifted the tape.

This required methylated spirits and elbow grease.

And the red goo got on my hands. I should have worn gloves.  I can’t get the red gunk off. Yew!