For various family reasons -- mainly events the seven year old wanted to attend, like gymnastics class and the Greek Festival (Greek pastries and lamb -- yumm!), we missed most of the Baltimore Book Festival. I simply drove down on Sunday afternoon for my presentation.
The Children's Bookstore Tent was packed. The crowd laughed and had a great time.
And then the speaker (Kevin O'Malley) stopped talking and moved to a table at the side to sign books. And the whole crowd got up and lined up there.
When I came to the front of the tent to speak -- the seats were empty.
"Just begin talking," the bookstore owner ordered -- so I did.
I ended up with eight people -- four kids and four adults. But still, we had a great conversation about non-fiction, about book publishing, and about illustrators and illustrations.
I quized them about Halloween and other stuff, giving out Halloween Book of Facts and Fun pencils as rewards for correct answers. (and ended up giving pencils to all of them for being such a good audience.)
I signed a few books for people, and then I signed stock for the Children's Bookstore. They said that TO FLY had sold 20 copies before I came to talk. And that they'll be bringing my Halloween book to various book fairs during October. nice.
Went home to enjoy more Greek pastries. There's nothing like a sugar buzz from too much honey.
-wendieO
(waving "hi" to my sister, who finally found my blog)
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2 comments:
Hi Wendie, Ugh, nothing like starting your talk to an empty room. Fuse 8 was talking about how nonfiction speakers don't draw the same crowds, even though they might do the same wonderful level of work, but without recurring characters like Olivia or Lily or whomever, it's tough to build a rabid following. Sounds like it went well, though, all things considered. Nice that they sold so many To Flys, too!
P.S. I'm on livejournal, and I don't know how blogger does live links. In livejournal, there's a little chainlink icon near the top of the window you type in. If you highlight the word you want to link, then click on the chainlink icon, a box appears for you to type in the url you want to link to. Good luck!
ooooh that sounds neat, Laura.
There are a lot of icons (sometimes) on the text box of blogger, too. I'll have to look for one.
Actually --
I put that AOL link in there using the "insert URL" button. but I had simply left a space. hmmm. wonder if highlighting a word would do the magic -- as you suggest. Neat! (I really should read that book about Blogger that I checked out of the library, shouldn't I? :-)
-wendieO
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