Book Love

Touring for a new book reinforces for me the fact that I love books. I love writing ’em, selling ’em, meeting the people who read ’em, and the people who sell them. Last night I had the priviledge of signing at The Book Exchange in Marietta. Book Exchange owner Cathy Blanco has to be one of the hardest-working booksellers I know. Her shop is small, and true to the name, they sell used–as well as new–books. Now, some writers absolutely hate the idea of a used bookstore. Not me. I know from experience that somebody who picks up a used copy of one of my books for a buck or two will usually decide they really need to buy my new hardback as soon as it comes out. Or, maybe they’re a working mom or retiree who can only afford to feed their habit by buying used books. I’m good with that. Cathy has become well known with authors in the Atlanta area, especially romance writers, because she and her staff really know how to move books. For DEEP DISH, Cathy decided to throw a wingding of a party. She charged five bucks a head, took reservations and when the reservations started flooding in, she went to work. She put her wooden bookcases on wheels so she could move them to the sides of the shop to make room for folding chairs for her customers to sit in. One of her workers, Theresa, made a huge vat of chicken salad–with grapes–mmmm! Somebody else made cheese straws. You can’t have a party in the South without chicken salad and cheese straws. I think there’s an ordinance. Then, because Cathy always tries to have refreshments that tie in with the theme of the book, she made two of the tomato soup chocolate cakes that figure in the plot of DEEP DISH. She had fried pork rinds–which also figure into the book, and Moonpies, because the dog in the book is named Moonpie. She served wine, and Diet Coke–because I drink a lot of Diet Coke when I’m working. And the people came. More than a hundred of them, lined up outside the Book Exchange, chatting with their girlfriends, co-workers, their sisters and their mamas. Two of my college roommates, Nancy and Sheryl came too, and I got to see the snapshots of Nancy’s daughter Stephanie’s wedding, which I missed because I was on tour. We laughed and sipped wine, took snapshots, scarfed down the cake, and “visited.” That’s what we call it. “Visiting.” As in, “Lorraine and I drank about a gallon of appletinies, and then we visited about what kind of shoes we would wear to that hussy Veronica’s wedding shower. And we decided we would both wear our new lime green slingback spikes, just to show Veronica we don’t care that she didn’t ask us to be in her wedding.” Now, “visiting” is different from “fellowshipping.” I think mostly Baptists do fellowshipping. At our party last night, we had die-hard Southerners and Yankees and Midwesterners, and everybody visited and played nice. One woman confided in me that she had discovered the difference between women from the North and women from the South. “If you act ugly, a Yankee will call you a bitch to your face,” she told me. “But, now, a Southerner, she’ll just set her mouth, pat you on the arm and murmur ‘Bless your heart.’ “