W is for Weezie

Well, Saturday was my BIG DAY! It was my very first public reading of Green Eggs & Weezie! I have read it out loud before but this was the first "official" one – a huge step for anybody who has ever dreamed of writing a book.

There's a whole pile of work between thinking about writing a novel and doing a reading. There's the writing, which is excruciating, the editing, which is endless, the publishing, which is complicated and not for the faint of heart, and there's the promotion – which is a whole 'nother ball game. I thought I'd be good at promotion – I was a reporter for a hundred years, for crying out loud. I organized contests. I ran all kinds of promotions. I thought it would be easy. But you know, I'm kind of at a loss in the promotional department. I don't know what else I can do. Well, actually I do know, but to be honest I've lost all my enthusiasm. I should have been organizing readings all over the place but I just haven't had the gumption. I've been kinda living like a hermit.

Anyway, thanks to a pep talk from my friend Shauna, I finally talked myself into going to the library and asking if they would host a reading for me. Tanya, the absolute charmer who works at the north branch, seemed thrilled to do just that, so we set a date. Tanya promoted it on the library website and the Facebook page; I promoted it on FB, and the newspaper ran a couple of promotional blurbs. I didn't know how many people to expect, and I didn't want to run out of books, so I ordered 50 – 25 of Green Eggs & Weezie and 25 of my short story collection, Friday Girls. I hoped that would be enough, but I secretly imagined the library overflowing with people eager to buy my books. I imagined 100, at least, and got nervous about speaking in front of all those people ... and my hand getting sore from signing so many books.

Well ... things didn't turn out quite as I had hoped. Thank goodness for my Cold Lake friends – if it wasn't for them coming, there would have been three people at the reading: Theresa, the local reporter, who was assigned the story and had to be there; Tanya, the librarian who organized it, and had to be there; and one lady I'd never had the pleasure of meeting before ... I think her name was Louise, but maybe I'm just channeling some Weezie ...

My lovely friends, all of whom have already read my book, bought pity copies. Five in total. Dave helped me pack the rest back in the box and drag them home again.

It wasn't a complete disappointment. I did enjoy myself. I had fun talking with the ginormous crowd and I had fun reading out loud ... I've always enjoyed reading out loud and the thing with a reading is, there's no teacher to say, "That's enough, it's Jimmy's turn," when you're just getting to the good part.

Thanks to Shauna, Cassie, Michelle, Phyllis, Jenny and Dave for being my friends, buying my books and cheering me on. And thanks to all the people from far and wide who wished me well. Y'all mean the world to me. oxox

P.S. If you feel sorry for me and want to order your own pity book, here's the links:

Green Eggs & Weezie paperback

Friday Girls paperback

If you're in Cold Lake, I've got two boxes of the suckers! And you can read it for free at Cold Lake Library!