Thursday, July 21, 2005

Day #5

Has it only been five days? Seems longer.

Got into San Diego around noon, picked up the rental car, checked into the slum that is the Westgate Hotel, and started the drive-bys.

Baja Books, signed 3 paperbacks.

B. Dalton on Horton, signed 2 hardcovers, 3 paperbacks.

Barnes & Noble on Hazard, signed 4 hardcovers, 6 paperbacks.

Barnes & Noble on Grossmont, signed 4 hardcovers, 8 paperbacks, sold 1.

Bookstar on Rosecrans, signed 2 hardcovers, 2 paperbacks.

Borders on Camino del Rio, signed 2 hardcovers, 6 paperbacks, sold 1.

Borders on 6th, signed 2 hardcvoers, 6 paperbacks.

Waldenbooks on Friars, signed 6 hardcovers, 6 paperbacks.

Then I got stuck in some serious rush hour traffic, and it took 90 minutes to get to my signing that night, at Mysterious Galaxy.

Huge crowd. The store was packed.

Unfortunately, they were all there to see Jeff Shelby. Jeff's novel KILLER SWELL (great debut, go buy it right now) just came out, and he'd apparently invited everyone he'd ever known since Kindergardem to the event.

Jeff's a great guy, and funny (much like his books), so we talked to the crowd for an hour and got some big laughs.

Then came an exercise in humility---sitting next to the guy who has a line of fifty people waiting for autographs, when you only have a line of three.

If you're a writer, get used to it. It will happen many times in your career.

The staff at Mysterious Galaxy was great, I signed over 50 books, and afterward went out to dinner with writer Douglas Gibbs and his wife, and writer Mario Avecedo.

Got home at 11PM, so tired I couldn't even blog. Had a fitful seven hours of sleep, and right after I finish typing this I'm off to LA for drive-bys (do they have drive-bys in LA?) and an event at The Mysterious Bookshop tonight at 7pm.

Hope to see some of you there!

FUN FACT ABOUT SAN DIEGO--It's in California.

TOUR RESULTS SO FAR: 54 bookstores visited. I'm on track to break 100. Place your bets...

5 comments:

  1. "do they have drive-bys in LA?"

    As a matter of fact we do. It's all part of our summer tourism package. Discounts on hollow points and you get to keep your brass as a souvenir.

    Over in neighboring Burbank even the city government gets in on the gun fun.

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  2. Anonymous12:24 PM

    Damn, this is beginning to sound like the Bataan Book March. You're scaring me because I'm pretty much trailing you come October and I can't imagine that I'll hit 54 bookstores on the entire tour. I hope like hell my editor and publicist don't read your blog or they'll be flogging me to follow your noble lead.

    GPS: A modern navigational tool that allows the user to get lost even further from the main road.

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  3. I'll bet you count telephone poles
    too.

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  4. Anonymous11:08 AM

    It was everyone that I knew from BIRTH that I invited...which, when you consider the actual number of people I've met in 35 years versus the actual turnout for our signing, is somewhat depressing:)

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  5. Hi Joe,
    I've been lurking on your blog for a while. When I decided to self-publish my novel, I decided to go back and read from the beginning. I'm already glad I did. Thanks.

    I thought you'd like to know there was one day in this life when Dave Eggers suffered the same ignominy, perhaps even on a grander scale (sorry, Jeff) when he shared a signing desk with Patti Smith at the LA Time Festival of Books. I had a camera, but as I could literally see his blood boiling I didn't dare take a picture.

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Thanks for the comment! Joe will get back to you eventually. :)