My first reading!

Wednesday night I had my first reading as an author! When I published my first book, the publisher flew me out to Rhode Island to seek to a group of CEOs there that bring authors out every month. I’ve also presented on my book’s topics within companies I worked for, and a couple of months ago my local friends combined a book-signing party with a birthday celebration for a couple of other people. But this was my first reading.

It was at the most appropriate possible place: the Maggie Osgood Library in Lowell, Oregon, the prototype for Percival. (I have been Duly Informed that I am supposed to mention the library somewhere in one of the sequels). Of course, with a town this small, the library is likewise small. November in Oregon being what it is, it was literally a dark and stormy night by 6PM, when we were scheduled to start.

So we didn’t expect a huge turn-out, but the librarian had provided fruit and veggie platters and one of the volunteers (a friend who has also been one of my sounding boards for this whole writing adventure) baked cookies. We had enough to fill the chairs that were set out, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. They had some excellent questions, and seemed interested in the writing and publishing processes, and in how, going into writing my first fiction book, I knew that I could do it. (The answer to that one is that I didn’t, but once I’d goofed around and managed to turn out 7000 words, just writing on and off when I felt like it, I knew I had a good enough shot at it to be worth putting in some more serious work. )

One of the attendees, a librarian at the university, even suggested that I record my own audio books. I don’t think I have the proper tech to do it, sadly, but it was a nice compliment to my reading. If I ever do this again, I think I really need to do different voices for different people. I did do that to a slight degree, but it turns out to be like learning to speak Mandarin and dealing with a tonal language; to be effective you have to give up on worrying whether you’ll sound stupid and just dive in.

And I sold three books! My favorite sale of the night was to a kid in her mid-teens; her mom already has one, but she wanted her very own signed copy! (Awwwwww…)