National Chili Dog Day--and, oh yeah, my reading

According to our server at the Raleigh Hard Times Cafe at dinner after tonight's reading at Quail Ridge Books & Music (how's that for plugging two businesses before I've even hit the meat of the sentence), today was National Chili Dog Day. To a hot dog fan such as myself, this was excellent news indeed. The day improved further when the server explained that with every order of any size each person got a free chili dog. Hot jets! I enjoyed mine and the chili mac that was my main course. Yummy.

The earlier part of the evening marked my solo reading debut and was a great deal of fun for me. I thank the fine folks at QRB for hosting me (and for putting this big sign about me in their window). I hope I helped them sell copies of my book.





I also hope the audience had a good time. Sarah took blogcam in hand and captured a few happy snaps from the event. This first one shows the audience massing (but not yet at full strength; we ended up filling all the chairs). The crowd was much larger than I had dared hope. True, most of the folks were my friends, but I counted at least seven folks I didn't already know.


In this next photo, my friend, John Kessel, a fine SF writer and a Professor of English at North Carolina State University, is introducing me. He was most kind.








In this last photo--if you want more, I have them, but I thought I'd spare you in this post--I am standing and yakking. As you can almost certainly tell if you read this blog regularly, I tend to be extremely earnest, perhaps overly so; I was no different tonight. Despite that, everyone was very nice to me, and after the reading Scott leapt up and had me sign his copy of One Jump Ahead--while he shilled for it. Nice job, Scott!

I want to thank most of all my family and extended family and friends for coming out and supporting me. I'm very lucky.