Three for three, even, when one adds into account the creative writing class I attended today to talk about Being A Working Writer. There were four of us in total there: me, I.C. Esslemont, the new Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the university, Johnny Payne, and the professor, Gerri Brightwell. The students had a lot of good questions (no “where do you get your ideas?” :)) and we had a terrific time talking about the realities of writing. Later Gerri said they were equal parts thrilled and horrified about the look behind the curtain. :)
Then we had a smashingly successful event at the UAF Alumni offices, where I did a book signing & reading and we sold nearly every book the bookstore had brought in, so hooray! One woman came in quite early and I *knew* I knew her, I’d met her before, she was a writer, and I could not for the life of me come up with her name.
I did, however, come up with the title of her book, which I haven’t read since about 1994. :) “I know you,” I said, “you wrote a book called SUNDER, ECLIPSE & SEED, but I can’t remember *your* name.” Elise Gutenberg, that was it, and we had a great little chat and she was terrifically surprised that I knew the book and remembered it all these years later (I’d really quite liked it, and the cover was lovely).
A huge shout-out is due to Jim Hameister, who completely organized the B&N booksigning, had big beautiful posters made, provided water, tables, chairs, all sorts of things, and who is totally gonna be my PR guy when I get rich and famous enough to have one. :) And a second shout-out to Joe Hayes, who got the alumni offices signing organized and who was bemused as hell to discover what I said before the signing is true: people desperately avoid authors at signings because mostly they haven’t read our books and they feel embarrassed for not knowing who we are. (Really, hardly any of us expect you to know who we are.) Joe totally didn’t believe me, but then he kept watching people who normally came into the alumni offices regularly stop at the door and back away when they saw there was a signing going on. He started chasing people in. :) Anyway, the guys were awesome, all the events were awesome, and I’m completely thrilled and feeling all kinds of Fairbanks love.
And now I’m going to go collapse into bed. G’night.