Annie's Book Stop Reading

Yesterday I held my first reading and signing -- an event that I anticipated nervously but it went off splendidly and now I'm beginning to hope that I might actually enjoy these kinds of things! I've read a few other authors' accounts of readings,  mostly complaints at how sparsely attended they are and how many would-be novelists populate the crowd, but only once have I read a story about the people who make time to meet an author and listen to her read her book. There were some truly lovely people at my first reading. People from church, old friends who have supported me for years, newer friends who seem just as fiercely loyal, and the strangers who came by because they support local arts or their favorite bookstore. The lady who drove half an hour to meet me because we're both from Missouri impressed herself on my memory of the event but probably not as much as the father who brought his 8-year-old daughter to meet a novelist because she wants to be a writer when she grows up someday. That one I won't forget because I hadn't anticipated that anyone would think my novel was for children, despite its fairy-tale antecedents. As I signed her copy, I asked the father, "You do know this is an adult novel? I haven't read it to my own children." Here my gaze wandered to my 14 year old.  What I wished I could say was "there is profanity and sex and adult situations." What I also considered saying to the girl was "don't grow up wanting to write books; publishing is so uncertain and who knows who will read books when you're old enough to write them?" But I didn't. I told her to hold onto her dreams and to keep working to achieve them.