Hey, remember the St. Louis Writer's Studio that I said a group of us was forming here? Group member, Erik, has put together our St. Louis Writer's Studio Blog. Check us out and read about who we are and how we bumped in to each other to form this bunch. :-)


Okay, I don't think I'm ever going to get out of my apartment for an extended worry-free, non-book related period of time, until like February. Thursday is when I had the conniption. That's when I went around to a couple of bookstores and a couple of Wal-Marts to check out where my book was so I could tell people where to go (...to buy my book). Well, all 4 locations that I went did not have my book on display. So, being a writer and over dramatic, I'm thinking that there's probably not a book of mine available in my hometown of St. Louis (I have reported sightings of it in other parts of America), so, after hyperventilating, I round up the posse to stage a march. A march on bookstores. So, there we were, down the street from the first bookstore, donned in our "Free Counting Raindrops" T-shirts, just coming out of the huddle where we practiced our literary rendition of "We Shall Overcome." You never heard a literary rendition of We Shall Overcome? Believe me, you don't want to either. ;-/ We had signs: On front "Counting Raindrops on shelves"; On the back "By any means necessary." I was leading the pack with my bullhorn, ready to lead our chant:

Me: What do we want?
Radical Readers: Counting Raindrops!
Me: When do we want it?
Radical Readers: NOW!!!!

So, just then, my editor calls me on my cell phone. I tell her I need to call her back because I'm right at the start of the protest here. She knows because I always tell my editor what's going on. :-) We cool like dat. So, she tells me to hold the phone. She says a call just came down from Sales, and then she runs down what the bookstores purchased. I get off the phone with her and quiet the now raunchy radical readers...they've got determination in their eyes and fire in their bellies and they're ready to march. So, I call up a few bookstores again. I can do that, see, because I put them in my cell phone on speed dial. So, I call store after store, and sure enough, they do have copies of my book after all. Some are just getting them on the shelves. Some say they just got the shipment in and it's in boxes, and to call back tomorrow and they should be out.

So, there's nothing left for me to do but to disperse the angry crowd and tell them to go home. I explain through the bullhorn what happened and they're grumbling and I can see that adrenaline has set in and they're ready to rumble and if I don't do something, there's bound to be some cracked skulls soon. So, I step through them, shouting through my bullhorn, "Move it along! Nothing to see! You ain't got to go home, but you got to get the heezy out of here!" Most of them calmed down, mumbled as they went to the bookstore and browsed the bargain book section, got tea, coffee, and cookies, then sat down and got their read on. Didn't take much.


And now, I'm home, sending out newsletters, updating my email and mailing list, creating flyers for my local signings (October 8th @ Knowing Books, 3-5pm; October 15th @ Brentwood Borders, 2pm), preparing mailings to bookstores requesting that they order my book and sending them promotional cards, promotion, promotion, and more promotion and 10 hour days. And as you can see from the story above, I'm getting delirious.