by Sandra Gulland | Jun 24, 2008 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
It was a two-and-a-half hour drive from Denver to Edwards, but well worth it. The Bookworm is one of the best bookstores I’ve seen, and they really know how to put on an event: great advertising, good wine, exceptionally tasty appetizers.
Okay, this may sound silly, but I discovered the first sign of their savvy advertising in the washroom:
What a perfect place for an ad! It’s a universal truth known to all bookstore owners that book browsing and the need to use a washroom are mysteriously yet biologically linked. (Seinfeld confirmed this in a skit.)
It was a great audience. Many of them had already read—and loved!—Mistress of the Sun.
There were 51 in attendance, a number of them from book clubs. Here is another mother/daughter portrait: Therese and her lovely daughter, Rachel.
Another mother told me that she was looking forward to going to Paris with her daughter. They had read the Trilogy and would be tracing Josephine‘s route. What did I suggest? I recommended that she read Walks through Napoleon & Josephine’s Paris by Diana Reid Haig. This is a gorgeous book, recently given to me by a very special person, Janet Park Datema (more on Janet later), in St. Louis. Another good guide I recommend to Trilogy tourists (of whom there are a number!) is You Go Girl Paris. The authors list many Josephine B. sites to see.
All-in-all, a fabulous evening! Thank you, Bookworms all.
by Sandra Gulland | Jun 21, 2008 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
This book club in St. Louis has read both Josephine B. and Mistress of the Sun. They make a point to have food for a meeting that’s related to the book being discussed. They had brunched on crepes discussing Mistress of the Sun, and then came to see me at Barnes & Noble in Ladue, MO. One of the members had been to my reading years before—I’d been wearing my Napoleonic gown for that one. What will be next?
by Sandra Gulland | Jun 21, 2008 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
St. Louis is my epi-center, I swear. There is so much Josephine B. energy there, and it’s all because of Carole Wantz, bookseller extraordinaire at Barnes and Noble in Ladue. She has personally hand-sold over 3000 titles!
by Sandra Gulland | May 22, 2008 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
My husband can go in and out of an office supply store in 5 minutes. Not me. Yesterday I had the luxury of time, and I walked all the aisles, lingering. I did have a list: printer inkers, storage boxes (for packing away Mistress of the Sun notes), stick-on dots (for coding the research books on my shelves), but most importantly, a signing pen to use when signing my books.
When my first book was published, my husband gave me a beautiful Waterman fountain pen, which I treasure. But it proved challenging to use as a signing pen: it sometimes blotched, stained my fingers, and it could leak in-flight. Also, and most importantly, I had to carefully blot the signed title page before closing the book. In the beginning, when I had only few books to sign, I welcomed a time-consuming process. Now, when I’m signing as many as 40 books, I need to be more efficient.
What to look for in a signing pen
Recently, I stopped into a Chapters/Indigo store in Toronto, and offered to sign my books. I did not have a pen with me, and I was quickly offered a Sharpie. Well. Not that elegant, but— “They don’t blot,” the clerk told me. “Which is why we use them.” The other nice thing about a felt-tip marker, I later thought, is that you are given notice when it’s drying up—not like a fountain or ball-point pen that can quit mid-signature. Making a mess in a $30 book is not a good thing.
So I lingered long at the felt-tip marker section. It wasn’t an independent office supply store—the wonderful type of store where you can test the pens on a scrap of paper provided—so I purchased a selection, and headed north, to Petawawa Stables, where I had my horse to visit … and a book to sign.
I’ve known Dawn and her mother Yvonne since before I began writing Mistress of the Sun. I used to take riding lessons there, and my horse, Finnegan, is wonderfully looked after there during the winter.
I was delighted to sign Yvonne’s book, a gift to her from Dawn. I had tested the markers in the car: the Sharpies, a medium tip, were too fat—a fine-point would be a better choice—but the blue Staedtler (1.0 Medium) worked quite nicely … if only I didn’t have to buy a set of eight in assorted colors to get that one blue.
I’ll be in New York soon, with time, I hope, for one of my favorite past-times: lingering in the aisles of an office supply store.
Afternote: I will have more to report on picking out a signing pen soon. Stay posted.
Photo: Finnegan and me, taken by Dawn Townshend at Petawawa Stables.
by Sandra Gulland | May 17, 2008 | Adventures of a Writing Life |
This short video—Book Launch 2.0—is going around the publishing industry like wildfire, I’m told. It’s priceless.
