Photo’s from ALA
It took me all this time to download them after I got back late last night. Met some great librarians, great writers and had a blast with Allison, Jonathan, and Irv at the New Orleans Fencer’s Club tournament!
Picture with a Fan at ALA WestSide Books Book Signing
SCARS Author cheryl Rainfield Signing at WestSide Booth with Publisher Evelyn Fazio
Allison from the New Orleans Fencing Club with her copy of Open Wounds
Octavia Books in the Garden District - Wonderful Independant Store
Checked out 4-club competition at New Orleans Fencer's Club
Hanging Our With Ed Yamada from WestSide Sales
Book Signing 101 - Colpire Senza Essere Colpito
ALA books I put in my suitcase…
Here’s my list. In no particular order:
- Stick, by Andrew Smith (for me of course!)
- Kid Beowulf and the Blood-Bound Oath, by Alexis Fajardo (for my son but I’m reading it too! Signed by Alexis. How could I resist – it’s a graphic novel.)
- Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland, by Alexis Fajardo (for my son but I’m reading it too! book two in the series.)
- The White Assassin, By Hilary Wagner (for my son a fantasy series – it’s the second book in a series but I couldn’t find the first so I picked it up anyway – nice cover.)
- Almost Perfect, By Brian Katcher (for me – met the author at coffee klatch speed dating and he signed the book for me!)
- Bronxwood, by Coe Booth (urban YA looks gritty – for me)
Tag-line
Colpira senza essere colpito.
Hit but don’t get hit.
It’s a 16th or 17th century Italian Fencing Master’s motto. Considering it is for duels and not sport it makes sense. It is also Cid Wymann’s (the protagonist of my book Open Wounds) motto. I wrote this on books that I signed yesterday. Selene Castrovilla (Author of Saved by the Music, The Girl Next Door, and Melt) gave me the idea. And I found out it seems most authors have a tagline like this that they sign on their books.
I like the Italian fencing phrase but I have to say when I was signing, I was so nervous I had to write it down and hide it next to me on an index card. Sometimes I spelled it wrong because my hand shook. That could have been the coffee (drinking too much while in NO) or the forgetting to eat lunch (or both). In any case when I told people what it said and meant they seemed to like it. I like it too.
It seems to fit.
Open Wounds has Landed!
Family, Friends, Yogis, Yoginis, Colleagues, Fellow Writers, Ruggers, Fencers, RPCVs:
for a store near you or order direct from one. Amazon numbers make the publishing news so that is always a good place to order as a fallback option.
- Write a review on any or all of the following three sites (I’ve put in the links). Note you can also write one review and cut and paste into all three sites…
- Send me an email about your experience of the book. I love to get mail and will answer any questions/comments sent my way.
- Post a review or comments as you read on your Facebook wall. Write to your friends on Facebook about the book. Your friends have friends and they have friends and you can see where this goes… Click here for my facebook page.
- Tweet about the book as you read it. Start a group. Create a hashtag and go for it. Let me know too and I’ll be happy to comment as you go. My twitter handle is: @lunievicz.
Lawrence Block on the Late Late Show
I met Lawrence Block at a the Ragdale Foundation, a writer’s retreat outside of Chicago. He was there for a month and I was there for a week. I remember thinking, holy crap, it’s Lawrence Block! And he’s sitting at dinner right next to me! Holy Crap.
Okay. Not the most eloquent but I tend to get tongue-tied when I’m around celebrities. Lawrence Block has been one of my hero’s as a writer for a long long time. Besides writing wonderful mysteries like the classic Matt Scudder series (as hardboiled as you can get) he wrote two of my favorite books on writing, Spider Spin Me a Web, and Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. They are collections of his columns for Writer’s Digest when he was the fiction columnist. I read him religiously when I was younger. I use his writing techniques today.
That was the last retreat I was at before my son was born and I haven’t been back since but… I got a chance to speak to Larry a few times, hear him read from a new book he was working on, and talk about the difficult process of writing a memoir. He even defended me against some challenging critiques in the audience when I read my work. I write him an email every once in a while and I’m on his newsletter email list. I just got one the other day and wanted to share his interview on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. It’s a howler. I mean, I was laughing my ass off. He’s a man of few speaking words (Larry, not Craig), well-chosen and taciturn. Watch him talk about his book and enjoy himself. He’s a great guy, a wonderful writer and 100% himself.
Lunievicz 