Here’s one of my favorite bookstore stories. It happened to me in New York City.
Sometimes I’ll stop by a store, occasionally unannounced, and just sign some books. It’s a little bit of an ego trip, but mostly I do it because I love being in bookstores.
(A related, funny story. The mystery writer Lawrence Block—he wrote Eight Million Ways to Die and A Walk Among the Tombstones—used to sign so many of his own books that collectors said the only valuable Larry Block book was one he hadn’t signed yet.)
Anyway, I did this drive-by signing at a large indie bookstore in downtown Manhattan. The staff was pumped up that I came to visit. Big toothy smiles. Damp handshakes all around.
We were all practically dancing in the aisles, slapping high fives, hooting and hollering. Well, I was hooting and hollering. Bookstores still make me feel a little giddy, a little high. I remain a book junkie and I’m proud of it. I can still remember buying novels for a quarter or as much as a buck back in Cambridge, Mass.
The owner told me he had a couple hundred of my books ready to be signed, all turned to the title page, just the way collectors like it.
Sure enough, the books were neatly laid out on a long table at the rear of the store.
Two hundred Richard North Patterson novels.
So I signed them.
At another store I stopped at for an impromptu signing, the manager told me she loved my books. She said she’d read all of my Alex Delaware novels. I told her I was a fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels myself.
That should get a smile out of Kellerman anyway.