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Old writer dude and Samaire Wynne, owner of
Black Raven Books
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For me, this was a most anticipated day — the release party for
Fugue Devil: Resurgence at
Rioja! A Wine Bar, in
Greensboro. Some weeks ago, Ms. B. and I visited Rioja, as we are
often wont to do, and got to talking to
Jake Assaf, the owner, about my
upcoming book. He suggested we have a book release party at Rioja, and this
struck us all as just about the best idea ever. Books! Wine! Food! Party! Many
happy peoples! Wine! So, we settled on June 4 as the fateful day, and there has
been plotting ever since.
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Jake, owner of Rioja, took this photo of Ms. B.
and me just before
the festivities commenced.
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Samaire Wynne, good friend and the owner of
Black Raven Books, came down from Martinsville, VA, for the event. My
daughter, Allison, was in town, so she came too. I made up a
bunch of appropriately themed tickets and scrounged up some door prizes,
which included a couple of bottles of wine and a number of my earlier books
— including Blue Devil Island,
The Monarchs,
West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman, and
others. Things were scheduled to get started at 4:00 p.m., and — sure enough
— the traffic flow began right on time. Before we knew it, Rioja was
completely filled up, and we had wine, food, and books flowing all over the
place. Naturally, I was hoping we'd have a good turnout since it meant
significant sales for both us and for Jake, and we were so not
disappointed. As far as I could see, Jake was hopping great guns the entire
time, and we sold bundles of books. Everyone in the place seemed to enjoy
themselves, and Ms. B. and I got to see many friends, old and new, from just
about every sphere of personal influence — former officemates, geocachers,
writers, artists, supper club mates, friends of friends... you name it.
After all these years and a lot of books, this was the first release party I've
put on, and it will definitely go into the record books as successful.
Now, whether I'll be fired up about doing this kind of thing for future
books, who the heck knows? But for
Fugue Devil: Resurgence, a big ol' party
was just the ticket.
After the event, Brugger, Samaire, Allison, friends Terry & Beth, and I headed
over to nearby
World of Beer to snag some dinner. The place was a madhouse, at least at first, and
we spent most of the next three hours waiting for drinks, waiting for food,
waiting for service in general. We enjoyed the food, but the experience was
far from fully satisfying, especially since the place cleared out quite a
bit long before we were ever served. I've generally enjoyed the place, so
I'm sure we'll give them another shot. I really hope they'll do better
because, as near as we could tell, they
could have and
should have done better this time around.
So, a little sad we ended on a less-than-stellar note, but the high from the
book event isn't going away anytime soon. 'Twas indeed lovely.
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Devaluing a book for friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott)
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Friends Mark and Kelly... Do they know what they're in for? Probably
not....
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Chad has already given the book a look. Tina has not.
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Shiny happy people... or something
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The crowd moves in.
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Friend and former co-worker Heather happy to have snagged a copy.
Little does she know....
Photo by James Lyons |
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Door prize tickets |
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