Book Festival!

So I had this experience today at the festival--I started reading the first chapter of THE CHIHUAHUA CHASE aloud and I suddenly went DAMN! THIS SOUNDS BETTER THAN I REMEMBERED! Do you ever have this experience? By the time you finish a project you're pretty sick of it and you're also pretty sure it stinks. And so you never look at it again. In fact, you avoid making eye contact with it out of sheer embarrassment like it's a family member that's going to make a fool out of himself or herself in front of a large group of people, thereby forcing you to lie and say WE'RE NOT RELATED before slipping out of a back door.

Yeah. That's how I feel about my books in general and this one in particular (because it's the newest). But after reading CHIHUAHUA aloud today, I thought to myself HEY! I would have enjoyed this as a kid! It was a nice moment.

Another nice moment today--a leetle girl walked past The King's English table and squealed, "MOM! LOOK! EYEBALLS AND BOOKS!" She was referring to the eyeball soaps we're selling for Halloween.

Oh, eyeballs. I love you so.

Audio Books

I've said this before, but I've recently discovered the pleasure of being read to again--listening to audio books reminds me of elementary school days when you'd run around at lunch hours playing kissing tag (HERE I COME, BOYS!) and then you'd go in and have the teacher read to you for twenty minutes while you put your hot, sweaty little fifth-grade face down on your desk while breathing in the aroma of newly sharpened pencils and erasers and crap like that.

Those were the days!

Anyway, I just finished listening to a hysterical performance of QUEEN CAMILLA by Sue Townsend. The book was overlong, perhaps, but when it comes to the royal family no one brings it like Sue Townsend. WAY TO GO, SUE TOWNSEND! WHO'S YOUR DADDY?!

Now I'm listening to a David Baldacci thriller called SAVING FAITH, performed by your boyfriend and mine, Chris Noth (he of moody, broody LAW AND ORDER fame). I love me some Chris Noth but wow. When he tries to do the women's voices, I have to pull over, get out of the car, fall down on the nearest patch of grass and roll around while laughing hysterically. It's like watching all the football players dress up in drill team uniforms and do the jump splits during a pep assembly.

Thank you, Chris Noth. You've made me a happy, happy, happy girl.

Disclaimer first

This post could sound garbled. About 30 minutes ago I took a bunch of Advil for my muy sore knees. Only it wasn't Advil, it was Tylenol P.M. WHY DO I NOT PAY CLOSER ATTENTION TO CONTAINERS? I once accidentally brushed my teeth with fast-actin' Tinactin because I do not pay close attention to containers.

Anyhoo! I just wanted to say that I read again to Randi's students and they seemed engaged with the story, so that's good. What I really want to say, though, is that even though I went over this manuscript with a fine-toothed comb (I thought), I found a few spelling errors and unnecessary word repetitions as I read. ALOUD.

You see where I'm going with this, don't you? You. Should. Always. Read. Your. Stuff. Aloud. Especially before sending it to your agent.

On the food front, I am having a root beer freeze from Hires AS WE SPEAK.

To attend or not to attend

As an on-again-off-again employee of The King's English, I've had the opportunity to attend a LOT of readings over the years. In fact, I attended one last night. Heather Armstrong, aka "Dooce," did a reading at the Framery (next to the store), and she was everything her many fans would have wished for--gorgeous, funny, sassy.

When I was telling a friend (a poet! and a fabulous one!) about the event, she told me how much she does NOT enjoy going to readings, even if she adores the author. And I do have to say that some of the readings I've been to at TKE made me want to seriously sedate myself. Literary short fiction writers tend to be the worst. They drone on in these portentous monotones with occassional (and sometimes suprising) bursts of emphases. Like I remember this one writer who read the word "broccoli" as though it was full of special significance and symbolic heft, which it wasn't. It was just the word that happened to be there when she randomly switched gears from "monotone" to "dramatic."

Anyway. Enough of that. I want to know what you think about readings--as someone in the audience, as someone who's been the reader.

Meanwhile you'll be thrilled to know I ate two cupcakes this afternoon. One of them had orange creme frosting.