Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Tonight's signing

was, at least in my experience, pretty darn successful. Between the three writers we brought a total of 11 friends, but the rest of the audience outnumbered us and our friends. The panel discussion ran the full hour, and the audience grew over time--which is definitely an improvement over shrinking while you speak. My fellow panelists, Lisa Shearin (who really made this happen) and James Maxey, were entertaining and gracious. The Barnes and Noble folks were as nice as could be and had a lot of our books in stock. The audience members asked good questions and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. My friend and the senior SF writer in the area, David Drake, showed up from Chatham County and provided interesting commentary.

I think everyone there had a good time.

I don't know how many books the Cary Barnes & Noble sold, and that is the ultimate measure of the success of any such event, but I'm hoping it's a decent number.

After the event, the 11 of us in the writers and friends/families group retired to Gypsy's Shiny Diner for dinner and further conversation. No one booth there could hold 11 people, so we split up, but we all still managed to chat a reasonable amount.

I had a good time and would definitely do other signings with these folks. Maybe next year, when we'll all have new books on the stands.

7 comments:

Lisa Shearin said...

Great post, Mark! (as always). I blogged on the signing as well, and included photos and a link to your post. You said it best, so I'm sending my readers over to you today. ; )

Lisa

Mark said...

I have to say that I liked your post better, and yours had pictures. Thanks for posting those, and thanks again for making the signing happen.

Lisa Shearin said...

You're most welcome!

Anonymous said...

Great to meet you in person after emailing, Mark! And very good to hear you and Lisa and James speak too. Maybe we could do something similar in the library one day!
~ Dan
Wake County Public Libraries

Mark said...

Thanks, Dan. It was great to meet you, too. I'd love to do a similar thing at the library. I'm sure the other writers would feel the same way. Just let us know when you'd like to do it.

steveburnett said...

Thought the evening went well, glad I stopped in.

Mark said...

I'm also glad you could make it.

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