I feel like I have to pre-empt the following with a “Ptui, ptui, ptui—bli ayin hara!” qualifier.

Prepping for the release of HOW TO WELCOME AN ALIEN, my latest book, was a lot of work. The publisher and I brainstormed who to send ARCs to, we secured a bunch of reviews and interviews, and I posted almost daily to try to drum up sales.

For the first couple week, sales were pretty good. Not fa...