Wow! What a night! I may be recovering from last night’s book launch at Common Language for weeks (which is going to be tough ’cause there is another fun event scheduled for April 26 at 3 pm at Bookbound in Ann Arbor – I may need to get in some power naps before then).

Enjoy these photos from last night, courtesy of expert presenter and photographer John Mola. (You can view more pics here and here.)

Thanks to Keith Orr and Martin Contreras, owners of Common Language, for their generosity as our hosts for the evening. They are wonderful souls! Go now (right now!) to their store and buy lots of stuff. And meet their beautiful, happy, sweet canine rescue mascot Duke.

Thanks to my guinea pigs … er … amazing readers who took part in presenting some of my wilder reviews. Yes, there were accents, cartoon voices, Mad Libs-esque games, saucy asides aplenty, laughter, editorializing, aural mimicry of John Barry’s hypnotically bizarro Black Hole score, and spot-on Xanadu roller boogie choreography.

After a lovely intro by Keith who had some very encouraging things to say about me being a reviewer who blends the personal and professional in a humorous and (more or less) kind-hearted way (I’m paraphrasing shamelessly!), the rogues gallery rundown of readers (who pretty much unraveled any good will achieved by Keith’s remarks) included the following folks …

Rachel Murphy with “Did you read the book first? Life of Pi“; Lyn Weber with “Never trust a movie with a colon in the title … The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones“; John Mola with “Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean … HBO’s Behind the Candelabra“; Rebecca Biber with “Twerking, tongue all a-twangle: Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz“; Nick Oliverio with “A psychedelic fever dream … for kids! Disney’s The Black Hole“; and Barbara Bruno with “Gene Kelly, sir, you owe us an apology: Xanadu.”

I love my talented friends, who made me feel so very special reading these crazy musings of mine. My mom once told me that Quentin Tarantino will show up at friends’ homes and make them listen to his scripts (in development), read aloud by the maestro himself. I totally get that now, as last night I realized (while listening intently, of course!) that I have a tendency to overuse the terms “heebie jeebies,” “balsa wood,” and “skeezy.” I’ll leave it to you to figure out where and how!

Thanks again to Keith and Martin for a fun night – they are now carrying copies of Reel Roy Reviews in the store as well as my mom’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter essay collections. (Read her latest Homeward Angle column here.)

And my deepest appreciation for the friends who participated and who attended.

Speaking of friends, while I’m in this giddily self-promotional haze, thanks to new friend Gina Furia Rubel for the following comments about the book. (Gina’s Twitter bio describes her as “CEO of FuriaRubel, a Legal Marketing, Web & Public Relations Agency; media source, speaker, blogger, & attorney who loves travel and photography” … all true! But she is also a warm, very witty, and delightful soul who loves animals and movies. My kind of person!)

Gina writes, “If you love movies, wit, snarky commentary and humor as much as me, you will love reading Roy Sexton‘s book, Reel Roy Reviews. Perhaps, Roy, you will solve the riddle of how the $10+ movie ticket and $8 popcorn entitles many of us to ‘armchair quarterbacking’ or answer why the movie Xanadu was ever filmed….”

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Please check out this coverage from BroadwayWorld of upcoming book launch events. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan; by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan; and by Memory Lane Gift Shop in Columbia City, Indiana. Bookbound, Common Language, and Memory Lane also have copies of Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series.