National Night... Books?
Aug. 8th, 2007 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseLast night was National Night Out where neighbors get together and share pickel rolls, stale crackers and such. My family and I strolled over a few block with our M&M cookies to share, and we got to talking to some people. One of our neighbors fondly recalled the time I handed her copies of my books that I'd had stashed in my car (I do that a lot.) We joked that I should bring over a few novels and leave them as freebies next to the deserts.
Next thing you know, I'd gone home for a half dozen copies of Tate's Tall, Dark & Dead and my Archangel Protocol. Shawn, my partner, put up a note that said, "Free! Local author. Please take!"
The reaction was, as we say here in Minnesota, interesting.
By in large, people couldn't quite grok the fact that their neighbor -- a dumpy, stay-at-home lesbian mom -- was in fact a New York published author. They weren't unkind in any way, just baffled. There was a lot of the typical, "You wrote this? All of it?" And, "You got published... oh! Berkley!?" (Because they were expecting a vanity press). And, "Do you do this for a living???"
Shawn and I remarked on the fact that, before I started getting serious about writing, I'd never met an real, LIVE authors before either. I knew books were written by people, but I just never conceivd that those people could be sitting next to me on the bus or standing in front of me in the grocery store.
I think, in fact, meeting a real author for the first time broke that (what is it called?) 5th wall for me. Once I met and talked to someone who'd done what I was trying to do, what I was trying to do no longer felt unattainable. If so-and-so had done it (and they were a real, normal person), then it followed that I could too.
Even so, occassionally Shawn will still have a moment like our neighbors had. The first time I went to a RWA meeting and I mentioned it was at the house of Connie Brockway, Shawn just about fell over. "Connie Brockway!" She said, "She's, like, a real author."
As opposed, you know, to the fake one she's got at home. :-)
Next thing you know, I'd gone home for a half dozen copies of Tate's Tall, Dark & Dead and my Archangel Protocol. Shawn, my partner, put up a note that said, "Free! Local author. Please take!"
The reaction was, as we say here in Minnesota, interesting.
By in large, people couldn't quite grok the fact that their neighbor -- a dumpy, stay-at-home lesbian mom -- was in fact a New York published author. They weren't unkind in any way, just baffled. There was a lot of the typical, "You wrote this? All of it?" And, "You got published... oh! Berkley!?" (Because they were expecting a vanity press). And, "Do you do this for a living???"
Shawn and I remarked on the fact that, before I started getting serious about writing, I'd never met an real, LIVE authors before either. I knew books were written by people, but I just never conceivd that those people could be sitting next to me on the bus or standing in front of me in the grocery store.
I think, in fact, meeting a real author for the first time broke that (what is it called?) 5th wall for me. Once I met and talked to someone who'd done what I was trying to do, what I was trying to do no longer felt unattainable. If so-and-so had done it (and they were a real, normal person), then it followed that I could too.
Even so, occassionally Shawn will still have a moment like our neighbors had. The first time I went to a RWA meeting and I mentioned it was at the house of Connie Brockway, Shawn just about fell over. "Connie Brockway!" She said, "She's, like, a real author."
As opposed, you know, to the fake one she's got at home. :-)