Tuesday night's group signing at the Cary Barnes & Noble

Tuesday night, I joined four other local SF and fantasy authors--David Drake, Kelly Gay, Lisa Shearin, and James Maxey--in what has become an annual event, our group panel discussion and signing at the Cary Barnes and Noble. All of us had books that had recently appeared, and the store had them all in stock, so the timing of the event was great. I even got to see for the first time the paperback version of The Wild Side.

As usual, the crowd, which numbered something around 35 people, was a nice size, and the people acted interested and asked good questions.

We began by introducing ourselves and our most recent books. Here I am showing off (and flogging) No Going Back, whose lovely John Picacio cover always makes a great first impression.

As always, click on a photo to see a larger image. All photos courtesy of Gina.

After that brief bit of plugging, Linda Maloof and her fine Barnes and Noble team asked the audience for questions. Folks asked us about everything from Ray Bradbury to books we'd recommend, and from our writing processes to how much we altered our work to try to hit commercial demands. (In my case, the answer to that last question was a resounding "Never!" and then a bit of a rant.)

Here we all are watching James as he responds to a question.

I must be answering something in this next photo, but I appear to be trying to cast a spell on someone.

I really did, by the way, have a name sheet in front of me, or at least I think I did, but in all these shots I appear to be sitting in front of Lisa's. Sorry about that.

After we finished, we all signed books for those who bought them and generally hung out and chatted. I was pleased to see the store sold out of its (admittedly small number of) copies of both No Going Back and Children No More. Here's the audience dispersing as we moved into that phase of the evening.

My thanks again to Linda and her team. They did a great job with the event, and I look forward to repeating it next year.