electric mist

The read last Sunday...

I meant to post this Monday, but then Monday I majorly screwed up a deadline for the construction company, which is just a dumb move, and by Tuesday morning, 8 a.m., it was fixed and all was completely okay, but man, I really hate doing something so blatently dumb. And it wasn't that I didn't know about the deadline, it was dumber than that: I looked straight at the little deadline notation last week, saw the date, looked at the calendar and somehow, in spite of all of that, decided that the third occurred on Thursday instead of Monday. Geez. I definitely need to be taking some of those memory whatsits.

So, meant to post about the read, got sidetracked into and then out of disaster, and now...

The read.

Was great. Really wonderful, actually. We probably had about thirty people? I'm not sure, something like that. Many of them were my friends and family, and I greatly appreciate them all coming out and, woo! buying the The New Orleans book. They were a great audience because I knew they were rooting for us to do well.

Crystal, the CRM at Barnes & Noble, had everything set up, had made announcements all week over the loudspeaker, had put a recording on their phone so that people calling in knew all week that we'd be there signing. We had others there not related to us (always a cool thing) who also bought books (yay). I think Crystal did a fantastic job getting it all set up and organized.

Dave Rutledge, one of the writers and publisher, intro'd us. Then Jette read from her terrific essay about old movie theaters in New Orleans. She had several laughs and much nodding of appreciation from the audience. I read next, and kept it very short, and people told me I did well, though I can never remember afterward. I sort of zone out. Then Sarah Inman read from hers and Ray (whose blog seems to be down right now) was our final reader, which is perfect, because Ray's piece is really funny.

We then signed books for everyone who bought them (and I love every single one of you who did that!) and then we signed the rest of the stock. We were each signing on our essay, and we got into a real groove and the rest of the stock disappeared quickly. By the time we were done, many of the people had cleared out.

(I was going to snag the signage, but forgot, and they had spelled my name wrong, which cracked me up. Never think for a minute you can keep much of an ego in this business. I went back the next day to buy a book and snag the signage, but it was already gone.)

What I loved about this event was the fun and calm I think we all felt; it was with friends and family and very well organized, which is great. Another huge plus was to see people wander over while we were reading... stay to listen... and then end up buying the book. That happened with several people, and that's extremely cool.

I hated not having more time to spend with the others from the book; we very likely won't be seeing each other any time soon. I may be able to attend the signing in Austin that Ray and Jette are organizing, but that so greatly depends on the work schedule. It was a little like watching the winding down of something amazing and important, although the book sales remain strong.

Posted by toni at April 5, 2006 11:54 PM