Sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to 80-ish retired architect at the café. He’d had heart problems since childhood, seen another regular reading it, and bought it on his recommendation.
Sold another to a flea market antique dealer whom I’ve known since pick-up basketball days. I guess my presence at the café wore him down. (His problem’s been prostate cancer.)
Sold a Cheesesteak to a retired math professor. (No health problems there that I know of.)
Gave one of those to a journalist-turned-attorney I first met in college. He wants to give it to friends who are moving from Oakland to Philly. (Eight stents for him.)
And a fellow in New Zealand said he would order an IWKYA as soon as he had some money in his Pay Pal account
But in my most interesting interaction, no book – or promise – changed hands. Ida, a tall, white-haired woman, explained she was occupied reading Gail Collins’s latest. When I agree Collins was a fine writer, she sat down. We exchanged where-we-were-from’s and how-we-got-here- when’s. On her side it was Minnesota in ‘65, because she’d “had a brown daughter” with her blues drummer husband, and figured the Bay Area would be a better environment.
She looked longest at my and Adele’s book, but, she said, she’d been a nurse “keeping people alive for 50 years and wasn’t ready for another story about that. She was caring for three people now and “just lost a younger brother to Viet Nam. I hate was but I love veterans. You can’t send people off at 19 to kill and expect them to come back. He never did.”
In other news…
Our Books, Inc. reading was a success. We drew many more people (40) than we’d expected, including one ex-client and several strangers, and sold 10 books. That was less than we hoped but pleased the Events Co-ordinator who said that, no matter how famous (or unknown) the author or large (or small) the crowd, one-person-in-four will buy a book. So we were right on the O/U – and the bookies made out like bandits.
COMING ATTRACTION: Wait’ll you see what I’ve already got in the bag for next week!!!