It's not like going to Suwannee or Coachella, but there is a definite sense of "morning after" with a book festival. Bookish festivals are less Bacchanalia, more tea-party, in my experience. Rarely do we experiment with questionable dance moves or off-script substances. Communal toilets, however, are common to both. Oh, did I guzzle a big honking glass of wine at the end of the day? Yes, but I wasn't hung over that way. Did I get dehydrated in the interest of reducing trips to the ladies'? I did. It was a choice. Was it either freezing cold or slightly sweaty at all times? Indeed it was, and I should have worn my wool skirt with the deep pockets and the flannel petticoat, because I—a volcano under most circumstances—was on the edge of shivering all day. None of this physical fiddle-faddle plays into it. What gives me the morning-after feels is the overload of stories. So. Many. Stories. Get us together and writers know how writers are; we're all playing with paper dolls in our rooms. So even the shy ones are willing to talk about why they write what they write, confident that ain't nobody gonna cast stones in this big glass house. At the mixer before the event, I consider the crowd and think: it's almost as if the authors themselves fall into genres: The ones who do it for the children in their circle, the ones who want to share their history, the ones who want to shoehorn their lifetime's expertise into the setting of a cozy mystery. Putting aside for a moment what drives them, I should be ashamed to admit how the optics play out for me: the man straight out of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a rheumy eye affixed upon the hapless wedding guest. I couldn't keep looking away from that tiny masked lady who wore enough purple marabou to render her into a child-sized, dyed Easter chick. Truly, it's my failure getting stuck on appearances. I might have learned their stories rather than allowing them to write themselves in my imagination. That's on me. But the stories I did not (could not?) make up: The generous sci-fi author who asked gently if I wanted feedback on my website. Bless him for actually looking at it! And he was right: it needed a stronger focus on the book itself rather than on chatty old me. Alert readers will spot the new section "Reviews and Awards" on the landing page. The children snubbed up like a boat under tow to a parental flank, being hustled past my spot, their gazes pulled like magnets to the bowl of Smarties next to my Venmo sign. The surprising number of people determined NOT to look at anything as they attempted to move along the center of the narrow aisles. Nope, not even their screens. Just eyes forward and feet moving, as if they were in a bad neighborhood at night. The weekend's highlight? Well, after seeing the sweet faces of some Tampa friends, it would be... That reader with the expensive hair and a fluffy dog under her arm who spoke with the dizzying frankness of someone who has been drunk for a very long time: "Where are the vampire books? Seriously! Where?" They weren't, she assured me, in Sci-Fi or Fantasy. "Did you check the romance area?" I offered. She hooted in derision. I kid you not even a little bit. The fluffy dog did not react to the hooting. It might have been stuffed. There ensued a longish, loopy discussion of Dracula, Renfield, and something about Stoker being her celebrity crush. As she meandered off, she said, "Can you tell I was an English teacher?" I actually love stuff like that: I mean not much weirder, but that weird was perfect. Especially since I was sitting under a cloud this year. My near neighbors each had a beef about something. One griped about the day, the table, the event, the lack of customers. And so forth. Another muttered darkly about which passers-by needed to get on Ozempic. Et cetera. Et cetera. A Pollyanna, golden-retriever-at-heart, glass-half-full person had her work cut out keeping upbeat. As a pre-tween, I was pressed into use as a tiny servitor at my grandparents' cocktail parties. I think most of the cousins were. I'm grateful, decade after decade, to have had this early job. It was useful not only in teaching me that gimlets* aren't the same as martinis, but also at fostering a layer of social callus. *Ask me how long it took for me to differentiate between "gimlets" and "giblets." Stir "gauntlet" and "gibbet" into that confusing mix as well. To earn Mimi and Bompa's approval as a waist-high moppet, one had to go ahead and give up the idea of being timid. It meant asking random adults the obvious question about what they wanted to drink, and then listening to what else they say. If they said something incomprehensible or uncomfortable, deflect and move along. Or in the case of this book festival weekend—being tethered to the table under a cirrus-puff of grievances—deflect and attempt to chat up any readers within reach. It made for a loooong day.
On the plus side, I got to ramble in Payne's Prairie a bit on the way up, share meals with a couple of button-bright youngsters of my acquaintance, and visit two very nice bookstores in Gainesville. Aw, that glass is lovely! And it's nearly half full!
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I swear I was not lurking at the Barnes & Noble. I was there to take a photo of my novel in the wild. It's perhaps endlessly thrilling to see the thing you've worked on out there sitting on a library shelf, a bookshelf, someone's hands... But truly, I was NOT lurking. A pair of young women drifted past the table of stacked books, and one, Rachel, picked up my book. "Squeee! You just picked up my book!" I said. "Wha?" she said, not yet fully alarmed by my obvious excitement. "Look on the back!" She flipped the book over and compared the author photo with my face. "It's you," she said. "I know!" I said, then, because emotions: "I've got goosebumps!" "I picked it up because of the cover." "It's beautiful," I agreed, without the slightest self-consciousness. "And it's about sisters!" Were they sisters, I asked, indicating Rachel and her book-browsing friend. "No. But we both have sisters." Rachel gave me a shrewd look and added, "Is this inspired by a real sister?" "Yes," I said, truthfully. "But my charismatic older sister is much nicer than that one." "Oooh," Rachel said. "I'm a charismatic older sister." And that, gentle reader, is how I accidentally strong-armed an unsuspecting passer-by into purchasing a copy, as well as how I ended up signing a short stack of books at the Barnes & Noble bookstore this afternoon. Thank you https://www.facebook.com/bntampafl Barnes & Noble South Tampa. And thank you, Rachel! In other authorial news, I was invited to map the settings for She Taught Me Everything into a nifty little app called Squirl. Squirl is designed to help users, as its tagline announces "Discover the places described in books." You can visualize where a book is set. So, is Brooklyn Heights your hometown? What snippet from the book did this author choose to go with the pin on the map for Brooklyn Heights?
You can check the map for books set in any given place—a special treat for bookish folk: to see the locations we've read about. Or, if you're built this way, it's a way to pre-view spots before visiting by finding books to read that are set in a specific spot. I love this idea, and hope other authors and their publicity departments will pile on! Thanks https://squirl.co/ I've attended many a book-reading and author-signing. These events are usually a good treat, though from time to time they can be actively painful: the author whose work is amazing, but whose reading style is like nails on chalkboard. Personal-size pan-pizza pet peeve: readers who declaim with a continual up-raise, so that even a stretch of workaday prose sounds like a call to arms. This oratory style can be cool for poetry (hi Amanda Gorman!), but I find it much less so in a domestic drama or, say, a nonfiction account of a military snafu. And somewhere in the back room here at the blog, I have a half-finished essay about the sartorial peculiarities of authors in the wild. Do I carry a badge from the fashion police? Does this stop me from judging? Am I stuck Chandler Binging rhetorical questions? I mean, I get it: fiction writers spent a lot of time alone, playing with invisible friends and muttering while wearing jammies or a favorite baggy poet's shirt. One must feel comfy while submerging oneself in the moral drama of tiny claymation people even while raining hellfire onto their wee imaginary lives. And when the lucky moment comes for the writer to read to in public, I think everyone understands that this (at least this, if not air travel) is the moment to doff the p.j.'s and get dolled up. Clothing is costume, right? Business casual, Carhartt's head-to-toe, Boho chic, biker boi -- it's all about identity. So when one of my odd tribe dons a Crocodile Dundee hat, or pairs an abbreviated red satin slip-dress with tall cowboy boots, or sports non-ironic shoutout lace spats and a leather jacket á la Madonna circa "Lucky Star," it's revealing on another level. Not just skin (it was a SHORT dress), but also about identity. Of course, when the glorious day arrived when I would myself be signing books in public, this badge-flashing, judgey-judgey critical eye turned briefly inwards. And then back out again. It was a chilly day. I had a nice autumnal pair of corduroy trousers and my trusty fisherman's knit sweater. Part of my self-image involves not wanting to fuss about how I look, evidently. I put on some lipstick and called it good. And what a day! There was a delicious charcuterie board, and Veteran's Day-themed bevvie (the Stone Wall, favored by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, involving mulled cider and optional Captain Morgan Spiced Rum).
The Little Bookstore is little, so standing room only means half a dozen folks, but--! We sold out of books (hurrah!), not all to kind friends. The first sale in fact went to a visiting thespian performing at the Clayton Opera House. Why yes, my good woman, just an ordinary day at the farthest reach from Manhattan! Honestly, I didn't quite get a cramp in my writing hand, but it was a delight to give it a go. Thank you family, friends, bookstore goers, and those shining beacons of civilization: bookstores! It's likely to become a theme for me but: I regret only not taking more photos. |
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