I am in heaven here. I have already made three trips back to my car to unload books and galleys…and this is on top of the bounty of books I brought home yesterday. On Friday, I mostly talked to authors, booksellers, sales reps and countless librairians….and gave away a bunch of MONK books at the MWA booth. Today the convention seems to be deluged with desperate, frantically clueless wannabes (how they got in, I do not know). Before the doors even opened, I was practically tackled by a woman who pitched me her book (something to do with elves, angels, past lives, the Clinton “murders” and iraq) even though I told her repeatedly that I wasn’ta publisher or a producer who options books. I was just an author. She wouldn’t let up…and then went from me to some other poor soul.
But this was far from an isolated incident … It has happened to me three times this morning already. A woman who wrote a christain spiritual dog training guide insisted there was a series in it and, when I told I wasn’t interested, she told me how a famous producer she went to high school with stole her idea for a TV series (she sent him a short story she wrote that had a dog in it and then he did a show with a dog in it). That same woman then held up an autograph line for 10 minutes telling her life story to the author of a non-fiction book about Blackwater…if he had a gun, he would have shot her. I saw this same thing happen in the line for a famous children’s author…a woman got up there and pitched the poor guy her idea for a book and inundated him with postcards, fliers and candy (allof which he threw away the moment she was gone). It’s cringe-inducing. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Well, other than the book pitching psychos, it sounds like fun. I’m sure my credit card company is weeping at my not being there and thus being unable to load up on books the way you are (“Oh, the fees we could charge! The humanity, oh, the humanity!”)
Biblioholism…the reader’s addiction.
Lee, there’s a series here: Desperate Wannabes.
Yeah, I think there IS a series there! It is reminiscent of Mamet’s GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, about a group of desperate real estate salemen. All you can do, I guess, is say, “God bless.”
There’s nothing better than aisle after aisle of publishers foisting free books on you. BEA is a blast.