Friday, December 5, 2008

Didn't trip on my feet (Tornado Siren reading report)

The reading last night from Tornado Siren at Brookline Booksmith. I'm especially grateful to half a dozen friends who showed up on a weeknight and squirmed through the First Light crowds on the sidewalks to find us down in the basement. Counting all the bodies in the room, there were more than a dozen people on hand to listen to me ramble about the book and read a few of the most exciting pages (where Victoria sees Ben for the first time and manages to get herself swept up in a tornado). It felt like it went pretty well, and I even sold a book.

I stayed to provide support to my fellow writers, who lined up at the podium every fifteen minutes for a couple hours. We had quite a variety--historical fiction, a book on eating disorders, Boston political geography, the history of daylight savings time (more interesting that you might think), spirituality and religion in the classroom, a story about a Japanese brothel. Though the crowds were pretty active up on the street level, not many folks managed to filter their way downstairs to us. Never easy to drag folks to a book reading, especially if you're not already famous, I'm afraid. (I just want to be Nick Hornby, is that too much to ask?) Still, we had fun, and sold a couple books here and there.

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