Otherwise known as How I Almost (Accidentally) Stole A Book From The RT Bookfair. Let me explain my moment of true greatness…

Saturday morning was the RT Bookfair. It’s a grand event where 200 or so authors (it looks more like 3000) sit in a huge ballroom behind stacks of books and chat with readers, booksellers, other authors and passersby. The idea is to sign and sell your books. The authors file in around 10:30 and the doors open somewhere between 10:45 and 11:00. The signing then goes on until 2:00. For the record, that is a lot of time to be stuck on a hotel floor without a bathroom. Just saying.

Before the signing, I had checked out of my room and left my bag with the bellman (I could be making up that title). So, I sign and chat for a few hours. Had a lovely time. Meet Colleen Gleason in person for the first time, which was fabulous for me since I love her books. Meet Dakota Cassidy, who is a hoot and hand sold three of my books. I swear if I could pay her to do my publicity, I would. Met Jaynie R., May who came the whole way from Thailand, Laurie Damron, and a bunch of folks who said wonderful things about my writing and are now my favorite people on the Earth. Then the booksigning came to an end.

I continued to chat, thinking I had hours to retrieve my bag, get a cab, get to the airport and catch my 5:00 flight home. Yes, I left before the Fabio dinner. I started to pack up the bag I had with me, the lights went out in the ballroom. [Let me digress here and say that the Hilton was under construction - as in wires hanging from the ceiling in the hallway in front of my room - and was a bit of a mess, which is a nice way of saying a complete disaster.] Before the lights went out, I had gotten Colleen to sign RISES THE NIGHT to giveaway here. I had also picked up two other books to buy. But the lights are out and someone tells me it’s 3:15. God forbid I actually look at my watch to verify the time, but more on that later… The time was a problem since I had a plane to catch and I was going to catch that plane no matter what. RT could not check out the people buying books thanks to the electricity issue. [Good job Hilton!] So, I decided to forgo buying the books and vowed to apologize to Colleen and the other two authors later. I then took off through the maze of tables and past the 6000 DO NOT ENTER signs on the doorways out of the ballroom and headed toward where I thought the stairs to the fresh air might be. [A tad dramatic, but you get the idea that I was a little frantic to leave.] I come up to a RT worker and explain I’m not buying any books and ask her to let me through. She looks at my hand and says, “What’s that in your hand?” I tell her it’s my wallet, lift my hand to show her…and see that I am, in fact, holding Colleen’s book.

This is the point at which I babbled on about how I thought I put the book down, how I had a plane to catch and how I don’t usually steal things. The good news is that it was dark so I could not see the nice RT lady give me the you’re a liar and a thief look. I felt it. Didn’t see it. The further good news is that she did not call security or smack me with Colleen’s book - both of which would have been entirely understandable under the circumstances. Instead, she told me to give her money, she’d check out the book for me and send it to me. I think this was her respectful way of telling me to get out of her sight. Again, understandable. The bad news is that in order to give her my address and actually get the book I could not pretend to be Sally Dumbass from Idiot, Michigan, tho I thought about it. In order for the nice RT lady to send the book to me - which I told her was not necessary - I had to give her my card, thus letting her know exactly who the moron was who (accidentally) almost stole Colleen’s book.

And did I mention the mad dash that started this whole mess was unnecessary because it was really only 2:15…

To recap:

1. I almost (accidentally) stole a book.
2. I almost (accidentally) cheated Colleen out of a sale - sorry Colleen.
3. I managed to give an RT lady even more work to do when she was already overworked and tired - sorry to the nice RT lady.
4. I raced to a plane and got there really early.
5. I am the poster child for why RT needs to have all of those DO NOT ENTER signs posted at all the doorways.
6. If in the future someone at RT suggests that readers and authors can be trusted not to steal books so that the signs are not needed, I’m sure someone will point out the year that an idiot author (that would be me) tried to steal a mass market paperback by pretending it was a wallet.

The rest of the conference went better. More on that later…

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books, About Contests & Associations, About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.