How does one follow up meeting George RR Martin? With none other than Mr. Jim Butcher, who was on tour for his newest Harry Dresden novel Ghost Stories!
My literary overlord found this event for us to go to. I like Harry Dresden, but I love The Codex Alera, so I was totally game for this one.
The Overlord was to attend with me (and drive no less), so she arranged for The General to meet us at Broken In Books, so The Overlord and I could Skive out an hour early (rebels!). By this point I was getting quite excited. The General arrived slightly early (GASP!) and we all reminisced about the many joys and pains of bookselling for Borders Group Inc. Much fun was had. So much fun, in fact, that we decided to close the store and bring The General with us to the signing.
After a drive to Boston that involved much traffic and many more bookselling tales, we arrived in Harvard Square. Finding The Coop wasn't a problem. Finding the signing, a little more troublesome. We entered on the college book side, with all the depressing expensive boring books. The Overlord finally asked a seller of depressing college text books where the geeks were and was answered with "I think they're having a signing on the other side"
This statement pretty much summed up what The Coop thought about this event. I called a week before hand to ask the important question like "do i have to buy my book in store", "how many books can i get defaced", "do we need wristbands". The answers to said questions? No, I don't know and no. To which I inquired as to whether the bookseller in question was aware of how cool geeks though Jim Butcher was. He said they knew how popular he was, but I maintained some doubts.
Now returning to the present. We were late. Naturally, the General is apparently never on time for anything and the fact that she was early to take over the shop was actually a clever ruse by the book gods because clearly they knew she'd be joining The Overlord and I before we did. I digress. Jim of much awesomeness was answering reader questions. I am a geek, but only so far as to love geeky things not fixate on minute details (ever seen Galaxy Quest?). I will not reiterate the Q&A portion of the evening, because most of it went way over my head, but what I did learn is we need to keep Wikipedia accurate because when Jim forgets a small detail he checks there for the answer because his fans are that neurotic and, apparently, Robert B. Parker was an amazing author. The rest.... well, I'll check Wikipedia.
Then the waiting came.
Dear The Coop, poor planning.
No one was in charge. No line existed strictly speaking so we mingled with fellow book lovers and geeks (except The General, she's not as geeky as The Overlord and I). We saw many great things, including (but not limited to) a skull in a bag (Bob!!), a bag depicting Harry Dresden's newspaper ad, a rad out of print beautifully illustrated short story (I was too shy of the stranger to ask to browse through it, but The Overlord says it beautiful and I trust her) and a set of book club editions that didn't look like death warmed over (I did venture over to this stranger to ask what they were because The Overlord didn't have the answer). Many good people abounded, although the only person I actually knew I'd met at a Mongrel show, go figure.
After a zillion years and one day we three booksellers were ushered into what appeared to be a slowly creeping line. A nice former Borders employee (now Coop employee) took charge of seeing that books where flapped (SHE let me pick the page I wanted signed). Then we waited some more. Why the wait? because Jim left his handler at home and when jerks (like me) brought four books because they couldn't pick between Dresden and Alera or even between which volume of the series, he signed them all. And he gabbed with us when it was our turn at the table. The General went first as she was wielding the camera, then it was my turn.
Apparently I was forgiven for my awkwardness because I was permitted a photo on the cool side of the table. What I actually asked was something like "May I have a picture with you on your side of the table, please?" Definitely planning my words better next time.
Moral of the story? Jim Butchers a good guy, The Coop can't wrangle geeks and I am still a bookseller even if I don't have a store for real at the moment (I totally tried to sell Sunshine to a pair of girls in the cafe while we were getting coffee).
More adventures to come.
Oh, and all photos taken by Erica. Thank you!
