Texas Book Festival 2013

Returning to Austin

I will be returning to Austin this year for the annual Texas Book Festival!  You may recall last year’s trip, in which I learned exciting things like how to pronounce Chuy’s, the difference between fiction and non-fiction, and how to survive a hurricane in a hotel nowhere near the hurricane.  This year I am hoping things go more smoothly, and by that I mean I hope there are no hurricanes, because everything else was great.

Details

I will be in Austin from October 25-28.

On Friday, 10/25, I will be at The Book Spot at 1205 Round Rock Ave #119, Round Rock, Texas, 78681 from 5:30 – 7:00 PM for a combination book signing and meet-and-greet cocktail party.  This is an event put together by the publisher and will include other writers, so even if you don’t want to meet me, maybe you want to meet one of them!  (They’re very nice.)

On Saturday, 10/26, I’ll be hanging out at the Texas Book Festival all day. The Writer’s Coffee Shop has two booth spaces rented.  You will find us in exhibitor tent #4, spaces 420 and 421.  We need this much space because we are awesome.

I will be sitting and signing books from 11:30 – Noon, but if you aren’t there at that time there’s a tremendously good chance I’ll be around the table all day, because TWCS is my ride.

On Sunday, 10/27, same as above, but my book signing time will be from 3:30 – 4:00 PM.

On Monday, 10/28, I’ll be flying home.  I don’t have any formal appearances scheduled unless you are an airplane or a hurricane.

Note: all times listed above are Austin time, i.e. Central Standard Time, because the earth is round.

So come see me!

Come down to Austin at the end of October and say hello, won’t you?  We can talk about writing, I can sign some books for you–my own or not, it’s your call–and we can have some drinks together, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more.  It’ll be fun!

 

Austin memories (4)

Mondays are for trivia

I have a few relatives in the South.  I don’t talk about them all that often, but they’re there, and they live in portions of Louisiana (my mother grew up in Lake Charles) and parts of Texas, and probably a fair number of other places I’m less familiar with.  So when facing the possibility of being stranded in either Austin or Dallas, I was well-covered, as I have a cousin in both locations.

Best spelling error of the weekend

The Austin cousin is named Katie.  Back when I first planned this trip, my mother suggested I contact Katie to let her know I would be in town and also-maybe-I-can-meet-her-for-lunch-or-something.  But I really didn’t think I’d have the time, since most of my three days were fairly well-planned by the publisher already.  And then I got stranded by a hurricane and had almost an entire day of free time.

Various meals

After getting past the necessary, “how did I not know you were in Austin and why are you here?” exchange, Katie and I agreed to meet for lunch on Monday.

“What would you like to eat?” she asked.

“So far I’ve had a burrito, pulled pork, fajitas, a falafel wrap, and Italian food, and I’m supposed to go out to a steak house Monday night.  So maybe whatever’s left?”

We ended up at a place called The Snack Bar, which I’m linking to here so you know where to go if you ever have a hankering for fried Brussels sprouts.  (Note: they were awesome.  Order them.)  I also had something called a Saigon Sub, which I ordered partly because I could recognize only half of the ingredients.  (It was also awesome.)

Katie, in case you’re curious, is winning the “most interesting person in this family award” over me.  Sure, I have the novelist/cyclist/banker thing going on, but that’s not topping physical-therapist/trapeze-artist any time soon.

No I’m not kidding.  She’s planning to run off with the circus someday.

I was not brave enough to eat here

We also discussed the likelihood of my actually leaving Austin on Tuesday, which Katie deemed highly unlikely, because she’d seen all the news stories I’d been ignoring.

Trivia night

My dinner plans ended up being changed from a night out at a steak house to pizza-in-the-lobby because everyone involved was basically exhausted and too worried about the storm to speak politely to the general public.

I was exhausted too despite a nap, but I was notified that Austin is essentially the pollen capital of the world and this made me feel a little better about not feeling so hot.

And Katie was trying to interest me in dinner-and-trivia, which happened to be taking place near the hotel in a bar/restaurant called North by Northwest, and there would be beer and frivolity and so on.  And the trivia event was actually called “Geeks who drink” and who could pass that up?

Geeks who drink

I didn’t agree to go until after I’d wheedled Katie into driving me to the airport the following (very early) morning, which she was happy to do because she fully expected the flight to be canceled.

“Look at the map,” she would say every time we walked past a television set, with all sets running a more or less continuous image of the weather map of Sandy, along with shots of a crane on 57th street that for some reason was going to fall any second.

“Planes fly,” I would counter.  “We’ll go over all of that and land safely in Boston on the other side.”

“Yeah, you’re not flying tomorrow.”

I nearly bought this

Trivia was a great amount of fun.  I’m more accustomed to the kind of bar trivia known locally as “the sucky kind” where the bar is too crowded, the host isn’t interesting, the questions are canned, and so on.  But this was outdoors under a tent, and the host was a clinically insane person who had a tendency to break out into dance numbers last seen on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.   And the questions were brilliant enough that I was kind of hoping I got held over another week.

(Quote, from all of Katie’s friends, and the host, to me– “Yeah you’re not flying tomorrow.”)

I’m not going to give you a trivia blow-by-blow because I’m pretty sure the only thing less interesting would be my describing how my fantasy team is doing, but I will say that our team– me, Katie and her boyfriend Brent— came in third behind two six-person teams.  So we did well.

Okay there was one question I want to talk about.  It was, “Name the two leads in the movie Prizzi’s Honor.”  I was perfectly happy to know the answer to this (Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner) and could have gone the rest of my life not hearing the next thing the host said, which was, “I know you were all fetuses when the film came out…”

THANKS SO MUCH.

Tuesday on a non-canceled flight

I woke up Tuesday morning to a non-canceled flight to Dallas followed by a non-canceled flight to Boston.  I texted Katie, whose last words to me the night before were, “I expect a text from you in the morning telling me the flight is canceled” with the news that the flight was not canceled.

Not only was it not canceled, it actually happened, on time and everything.

And I swear to God the captain said, as he described the path of the flight home, “There’s a lot of bad weather in New York still, but we’ll be going over all of it.”

There is an entire bar of people in Austin who owe me a beer.

 

Austin memories (3)

Sunday is for Sandy

While all of us authory/publishy types were hanging out in downtown Austin on a brisk Saturday, a hurricane you may have heard something about was aiming for the East Coast, and it was shaping up to be an issue for those of us who A: reside on the East Coast, and B: were expecting to be traveling back home any time between Sunday night and Monday.

I had yet to be personally concerned about this because I already had the week off anyway, and besides the airline hadn’t canceled my flight.  In a fit of randomness after getting my ticket I had downloaded the American Airlines app to track my flight, something that three weeks ago was an essentially unnecessary exercise for someone who obsessively memorizes his flight plans already due to a constant fear of missing a flight and being stranded in a terminal and bathing in the public sinks like Tom Hanks did in that movie, but which suddenly made perfect sense.  (Note: I just gave my editors an aneurysm.)  So from Saturday night on through Sunday morning I checked the flight approximately every half hour, and every time it came back as being “On Time”, and I was fine with that because my phone apps had never lied to me before.

Well rested

Sunday was the day we all got to sleep in, which was really nice after an extremely long Saturday that went on into Saturday night and a massive dinner at an upscale Mexican restaurant that served fajitas buffet style for us.  (And no, I have never seen the words “upscale” and “Mexican restaurant” next to one another before either.)  I’ve seen photos of this evening, and in all of them I have my elbows on the table and I am leaning forward looking like I’m paying attention to some manner of conversation, but I think the truth is I was just trying to hold myself up so I didn’t fall asleep face-forward in my fajita.  I was thus very happy that we weren’t obligated to be anywhere until 10 AM Sunday, on account of the book festival not starting until 11 AM, on account of this was Texas and there is church.

I arrived in the lobby at 10 AM and was immediately greeted by Suzy Duffy, she of Wellesley Wives and current resident of Wellesley, MA., who had this to say:

“Gene did you check your flight? Jen’s flight was canceled and you’re going tomorrow yah?  We’re going to the airport now to try and get on a flight before they closetheairportsareyoucomingwe’releavingnOWYOUSHOULDCHECKOUTANDCOMEWITHUS.”

And that is how the most serene portion of my weekend ended.

Still on schedule

But according to my little American Airlines app my flight was still a go, so even though the weather maps indicated that a bunch of colors were about to be spilled all over the thirteen colonies, I was prepared to accept that my airline thought it could do it.  Plus, I was pretty sure I couldn’t pack in under thirty seconds.

So I went to the book festival instead with everyone, and proceeded to be the least communicative person in the greater Austin area for the next three hours.  Because sometime shortly after Noon the flight from Dallas to Boston was indeed canceled, so after spending the first hour checking every few minutes I spent the subsequent 1.75 hours on hold to reschedule the flight.

To my vast surprise, I was able to secure a Tuesday morning flight, exactly 24 hours later than my canceled one.  Surprising, because as far as anyone knew Hurricane Sandy would still be having some kind of impact on Tuesday.  Even the woman who rescheduled it parsed this with, “we have some Tuesday morning flights that aren’t canceled yet.”

Sunday bookselling

The actual highlight of my day was probably during my half hour at the book signing table.  I was the last scheduled author on both days, and you can interpret that however you want.  I’m choosing to think of the other authors as my opening act, while it’s probably more accurate to say that I was put at the end because there would be fewer people left to offend at that time of day.

Four high school girls drifted into my approximate orbit about midway through the scheduled time, with two hovering in the foreground and two in the background, obsessively evading eye contact with all living entities that were not also high school girls, as high school girls are wont to do.

I carnival-barked the closer two over, as one of them appeared to be nominally curious, and then tossed some random details about the books at them in case something might penetrate.  The most curious of the pair picked up Immortal and read the back cover, while her friend kept her eye on me in case I attacked suddenly.

I continued with my clearly-being-ignored description until the one with the book in her hand said to her friend, “Did you read this?  This sounds really good!“

So they pooled together their money and negotiated a joint ownership arrangement, I signed the book, and the herd walked away, hopefully to lovingly pass around their one copy of Immortal for many weeks hence.

And now I have to consider what I might do with a fandom consisting of teenage girls.  What will be the scope of my powers?  Someone contact John Green for me.

PART FOUR

 

Austin memories (2)

Friday night: Never go into room 331

I don’t sleep well my first night in a strange bed.  It doesn’t seem to matter how comfortable or strange that bed happens to be, nor how tired I am.  (This was an especially large problem the two times I had to go on television.)  So my not getting into the bed properly until 11:30, while probably not a great idea given the long Saturday I was facing, wasn’t really that big a deal because I was likely not sleeping much anyway.

But what really didn’t help was the people trying to get into the room.

I kept hearing noises in the hallway from someone who was having trouble opening their hotel room door, and it took a while before I realized I was actually hearing someone attempting to open my door.  (Kids, always deadbolt the door.  It deactivates the key card reader.)  This went on for several minutes, then stopped, then started again, and eventually I went to the door and peered through the peephole to confirm that yes, there was someone there, and they wanted my room.

I called the front desk, but nobody answered.  This was likely because one of the people in the hallway was the guy from the front desk, who couldn’t figure out why the room door key wasn’t working.

But they went away.  And then ten minutes later maintenance arrived.  I expect all he was told was that someone in room 331 was having a problem with the door lock, and with nobody in the hallway he did what most people would do– and what nobody else had tried so far– and knocked on the door.

When I explained to him that the lock on the door worked perfectly, it’s just that there’s already a person in the room, he went away.

Ten minutes later the phone rang.

“Hi this is the front desk.  I have a funny little problem.  I just assigned that room, and I was wondering who you might be.”

I was probably not getting any sleep anyway, but the following day when people asked why I looked so tired, this was the reason I gave.

Saturday: Texans buy books once a year

Okay, so you know, the Texas Book Festival is insanely crowded because apparently this is when Texas comes out and buys their books.  Some very quick observations:

• If you name your publishing house The Writer’s Coffee Shop people will come, but they will be expecting there to be coffee
• “This is the company that first published Fifty Shades of Grey” is a surprisingly effective way to get people to walk away from you
• Every fifth person in the world has an idea for a book, and they’d like to talk about it
• Actually overheard: “So, what’s the difference between fiction and non-fiction? I’ve always wondered.”
• Successful ways to get people to come to your table include shouting “I am an author, don’t be afraid!  Come closer!“
• When you are the only existing evidence that a publishing house also publishes books by men you always have to be ready for someone to point at you from across a crowded tent

Red shirts and stripping

Each of us was issued a red polo shirt to be worn on Saturday with the name of the company on the front and the “The publisher that dared to go there…” on the back.  And even though it was clearly a woman’s shirt (the buttons were backwards) I dutifully wore mine along with everyone else, guaranteeing that if the Klingons attacked we would all die before the commercial break.

We were also informed that it would not be necessary to wear the shirts again on Sunday, which is only reasonable given none of us would have the opportunity to launder them.  The cowboys sitting at the table next to us overheard part of this, which is how I ended up agreeing to go topless for a bunch of Texans who were suddenly extremely regretful about having made such a suggestion in the first place.

Hey, I’ll take one for the team.

PART THREE

 

Austin memories

Various anecdotes

I am not the sort of person that instinctively takes photographs, possibly because I am not currently the sort of person who has a phone that takes decent photographs.  For most of my life my chosen method of archiving events has been to write about them.  For instance, I have few photos of my children when they were very young, but I wrote humor columns about them regularly for posterity, and so when my body was found people would understand what had killed me.

I therefore have very few photos of my own to share from the trip this past weekend to Austin, Texas for the Texas Book Festival.  (I’ll share what I have.)  But I do have some stories to tell, and this may take more than one blog post.

Friday night: Chuy’s

While I was en route to Austin I was contacted by fellow TWCS writer S L Scott asking if I was interested in joining her and some of the other writers while the staff dinner was going on.

This presented a few problems because,

1. I did not know there was a staff dinner
2. I did not know what night the staff dinner was and therefore what night Susie Scott was talking about
3. I wasn’t even going to be on the ground until 7:30, provided she was even talking about Friday night at all.

So I bought a couple of hours of Wifi on the flight to sort this all out.  I learned it was indeed Friday being discussed; the restaurant in question was to be a place called “Chuy’s”; the restaurant was “near the hotel”; Everyone was meeting there at 8 PM.

There was no way I was going to be there by 8 PM given my arrival time and the distance between the airport and the hotel, but since the hotel didn’t have a restaurant it was still my best opportunity to obtain some manner of food, so I told her I would be late and that I’d go to the hotel and then walk to the restaurant.

“You can’t walk to the restaurant”, she responded.

From the festival: company is changing its name to The Writer’s Coffees Hop

Evidently, “near the hotel”, in Texas, means, “not near the hotel” in every other place in the world aside from possibly Los Angeles, which may consider itself “near Texas” for all I know.

She offered to drive me to the hotel if I took the cab directly to the restaurant, and that seemed like an okay idea.

And then I had to tell the cab driver where I was going, and all sorts of wrong happened.

 

Pronunciation

Okay, so you probably aren’t me, and you probably see the word “chuy’s” and know how to pronounce it so that other people know what you’re talking about.  I see that word and pronounce it as follows:

CHOY’S

The cab driver had never heard of choy’s.  He called his dispatcher, who had likewise never heard of it.  They called another person, and took the spelling I had given them, spoke in whatever language they were all speaking for a while, and then he hung up, turned and looked at me, and said:

“CHEWY’S!”

That he’d heard of.

Next problem: Chuy’s is a chain, so I needed to tell him which one I was going to.  “The one near this hotel,” giving him the address of the hotel.

“Which one?” he repeated.

“The one a mile away from the hotel.”

“Which one?”

There is more than one Chuy’s within a mile of the hotel.  Because again, it’s a chain.

He decided he was sure he knew which one they’d be at, and took me to that one, and promised to wait for me to go inside and find them, and if they weren’t there he’d just take me to the other one.

Next problem: I didn’t know what anyone I was meeting looked like.  So I walked around this incredibly busy restaurant hoping someone at a table somewhere would stand up and identify me.

This did not happen.  And Susie Scott had not responded with a reply to my texted request for the restaurant address, so I was ready to give up and head back to the hotel, and maybe find a pizza place that delivered.  And then, six blocks from the hotel, she sent the address.

“That’s where we just were,” the cab driver informed me.

So anyway, it all worked out.  She came outside and greeted the only person getting out of a cab on the assumption that it was me. (It was.)  And I got to meet Lissa Bryan, T M Franklin, Suzy Duffy, and Ally Jean, and there was tequila and gigantic burritos and all was good.

And somewhere in Austin is a cab driver who will never stop telling the story of the guy who didn’t know how to pronounce Chuy’s.

PART TWO

 

Print edition pricing

The cost of printing

As I get ready for my weekend in Austin I would like to call your attention to this press release from earlier today:

The publishing house that brought you “Fifty Shades of Grey” announces better quality and lower priced books for loyal customers

To summarize, the per-book cost for print editions of Immortal and Hellenic Immortal is coming down.  Look for this price reduction (it is not, alas, retroactive, if you’ve already bought a copy) reflected first on the TWCS website starting in November, and eventually in the prices of copies sold by other vendors.  And soon, copies will be available in brick-and-mortar stores and all will be right in the world.

About Austin

I will be doing my best to keep updating everyone on my trip to Austin, but those updates will likely not be here, simply because I won’t have time to tap out a long blog entry.  What I will be updating regularly is Twitter (@genedoucette) and Tumblr (The Incredibly Unnecessary Gene Doucette Tumblr).  If you do not already follow me in those places and yet have Twitter and/or Tumblr accounts, I recommend you jump aboard.

And of course if you are going to be in Austin this weekend, look me up at the Writer’s Coffee Shop table, or otherwise wandering around the city looking confused and sunburned.

 

Texas Book Festival– Press Release

Austin is coming up

As I mentioned last week, I’ll be attending the Texas Book Festival at the end of October.  Specifically– if you’re looking for me, I’ll be arriving Friday afternoon 10/26 and leaving Monday morning 10/29.  The festival itself is 10/27 – 10/28.

Below is a press release link from The Writer’s Coffee Shop with more details.  I hope to see you there!

The Publisher That “Dared To Go There”…

 

Texas Book Festival

Austin!

I’m finalizing plans right now to appear at the Texas Book Festival in Austin on October 27 and 28.  I’ll be there to sign copies of Immortal and Hellenic Immortal, meet a bunch of people from the publishing house I am currently only acquainted with via email, and probably to drink too much.  Oh and also to see what the Texas Book Festival is all about, because I’ve never been to it before.

If you’re attending or otherwise in the Austin area the same weekend, let me know.  Or just pop by The Writer’s Coffee Shop booth and say hey…