Early this year, when I donated a copy of Mad World to my local library, they asked me if I would do an Author Talk event. They have local writers come in a couple of times a month for these events. I was nervous but agreed, since the proposed date was so far away. Well, time passes and the date approached. I had to face the fact: I had no idea what such an event is like. I attended the one prior to mine but that wasn’t a lot of help.
I approached it the way I do my writing: by obsessively preparing and outlining. I went into it with three printed pages of notes, that I had rehearsed. If no one asked any questions, I was prepared to lecture (ugh).
In the end, seven people (plus the librarian) showed up. They were all friends, family and neighbors. A friendlier audience could not be found. They asked questions and engaged with me. I got most of my points across without lecturing. It wasn’t lost on me that if my wife Alison hadn’t gotten the word out to her friends, no one would have shown up. There was no one who did not already know me. So much for the library event coordinator’s assurances that locals like to meet writers and discuss books with them. Absent my friends, it would have been me and the librarian, and a very short event.
Preparing for it did help clarify my thoughts about the book, the process and the state of the industry today. I’ll be getting some of that out in future posts to this blog. In the meantime, here is the announcement on the library web site:
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