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Family and Friends is my everyday journal. Captain's Log is where I pontificate on religion and politics.

Monday, September 13, 2010

A Sad State Of The Fair

Two days the booth has been manned with few sales. My novel has been looked at but no takers. Sunday is my turn to sit or stand there as people walk by mostly trying to ignore what we're selling, books. They'll stop and look at jewelry, sit for ten or more minutes to have a cariacature made, stand in line so their kids can ride a pony for five minutes. We have children's activity books, coloring books, picture books, but the parents aren't interested. A five minute pony ride is more valuable to them than something that they can take home and use as many times as they like, but that would mean having to read to their children or get the child to put down the remote long enough to look at the book.
One of the activity books in the booth is about dinosaurs. The author decided to write a children's book about dinosaurs that was scientifically acurate. Not one person was interested as we were surrounded by children all day.
Maybe we're the dinosaurs. Books have become quaint reminders of a bygone era. Today all people do is twitter in abbreviations.
Dave coordinated the booth for three days the other nine authors were there one day, but all of our books were displayed. I didn't make a sale. What I salvaged was trading one of my books and a plastic canvas notepad that Grinnygranny makes for one of theirs.
Lisa has a picture book about Spiderwoman based on the Navajo legend. Daniel my grandson should like it.
Lee has a cookbook. He's developed a mild chile seasoning and the book comes with two 3oz tins of the spice. The recipe that caught my interest was green chile chicken lasagna. When I brought it home wife, daughter and daughter-in-law looked all through it and I think they're planning on trying some of them out.
I'd already bought the anthology that Dave has a short story in, but he sells a number of fantasy anthologies for his publisher so I got another one of those books. Auntypesty is reading it and will give it to her brother when she's done.
Right after Optimus was published I had a book signing at the Fair Plaza Hastings. A gentleman came in who bought a copy way back when. It was nice chatting with someone who has read the book, still remembers it three years later and enjoyed it. He has a manuscript and I told him to e-mail it to me. I'd do a peer review for him. I hope he does.
I gave a copy of my next novel to last month's speaker at W2W and I hope tonight if she's there she'll have kind words about it.
I watched a program about Yellowstone and what would happen if it erupted, which is does about every six hundred thousand years. It's been six hundred and fourty thousand years since the last eruption. You never know what crazy thing you come across that is the seed of inspiration. While watching the show a story came to me, and I'm planning starting on it. Tentative title: After It Hits The Fan.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Just now catching up with you!

P M Prescott said...

I know you've been busy and had computer problems. Nice to have you back.

grandma1 said...

You have another granson you know.

Unknown said...

Thanks, PM! Like many others, I am having a tough time adjusting to Windows 7. Windows XP was just fine. Then Vista came along and clogged things up. This is considered a go-between.

P M Prescott said...

Michael the biggest problem is that just as you get used to one system they come out with a new one and you have to figure it out all over again.