1. Why is it such a hassle to request official transcripts? Especially if you went to more than one college. Grr.
2. I still can’t believe Kristen had to pack her knives and we have to watch obnoxious Chef Josie for another week. Grr.
3. This is a funny and sad and, unfortunately, true look at what being a non-famous author is like. Check it out: Hell is My Own Book Tour. Big sigh.
“There are a number of reasons authors such as myself go on book tours, all of them basically stupid.The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing everything the same way ever since….A lot can go wrong on a book tour. For instance – stop me if I’m getting too technical here –nobody shows up to the reading. When this happens, you’re forced to spend about 20 minutes with an apologetic, pitying bookstore employee, attempting to strike the right blend of self-deprecation, cavalier disregard, and passive-aggression toward the bookstore for failing to promote the event in any way except by placing posters in the bathroom of the store itself.
…This, however, is not even close to the worst thing than can happen. Far, far worse is when one to four people show up, speckling the 30 folding chairs the bookstore has arranged before the microphone and podium like survivors of some horrible plague.
You can’t not read for them. You’re grateful they came. One lady got there a full hour early, and has three pre-purchased copies of your book stacked on the empty chair beside her. Another guy – 50-ish, balding, ponytailed – is clutching a printout of an interview you did with a now-defunct website, and will ask you to sign it for him, as if the purpose of this tour was to promote this ancient, obscure drivel rather than your new novel. If you’re really lucky, he may also request your signature on an Advance Reading Copy of your previous novel, which has the words NOT FOR SALE on the cover and “25 cents” written in pencil on the title page. Another attendee is a nursery school friend of your mother’s who heard about the reading on Facebook. She’s beaming with pride and taking lots of pictures, as if your mom doesn’t know what an empty room looks like.”
Melanie Thorne 