Time Out

Ah, Chicago weather. Need I say more?

I’m here to get to as many bookstores as possible to sign copies of You Better Knot Die. The plan for today was simple. We would head north and go to a Borders and Barnes & Noble in the Lincoln Park area then after a brief stop at Costco we’d head toward Evanston and beyond.

When we left L.A. yesterday the temperature was hovering in the nineties and the long sleeve tee shirt I wore felt like overkill. My new favorite thing to crochet is a gaiter, which also seems to be called a cowl. The one I just made is wool and looking at it in L.A. made me sweat, but I packed it anyway. Good thing.

While it was sunny this morning and the sky blue with puffs of clouds, by the time we left, the sky had turned steel gray. When we got to Borders, the wind had started up. I signed the books quickly and when we came out, there were a few drops of rain. It was drizzling when we headed for Barnes & Noble, and then just before I went in the door, the sky opened up and dumped sheets of rain. Inside, I was happy to see You Better Knot Die on the New in Mystery shelf, and like at Borders, copies of each of my other books.

Since the weather keeps changing in Chicago, I figured by the time we went back outside the deluge would be over. No. As we headed up Clyborn toward Costco, the rain turned to hail. By the time we got into the parking lot, it had gone back to merely raining. Even though it was dark, you could see this giant dark cloud hanging over us. The wind lashed the rain right under my umbrella and the giant warehouse style store was a warm respite from the weather. We were still planning to continue on with our plans, but the second time we heard the pummel of hail on the roof, we decided not keep on going to the further bookstores.

By the time we were back on the south side, the rain had moved on, but the wind was coming through in gusts that made the large branches of the old trees above us creak. Wet leaves fluttered down and stuck to whatever they landed on. We dropped off our packages at home and decided to walk two blocks to a restaurant. The wind sailed around us and swirled into every open crevice in my clothes until I felt like I wasn’t wearing anything. The only warm spot was my neck thanks to my gaiter/cowl.

Earlier this week Linda wrote about managing time and deadlines. I am on the opposite side of that, for a few days, at least. I have turned in the manuscript for Behind the Seams. You Better Knot Die is out and if the stores I’ve gone to in L.A. and Chicago are any indication, is on the shelves everywhere. I have set aside the proposal I was working on, and for these few days I’m going to let myself go where the wind blows me. No to-do list. Just eat, sleep, crochet and run around the city going to bookstores.

Uh,oh, I forgot heat goes off at night - the disadvantage of being a night owl in a condo with central heating. I wonder how the gaiter/cowl will go with my pajamas.

What about you? Do you enjoy having some time when you don’t constantly have that nagging feeling that you should be doing something else?

A Sign of the Times

Although A Stitch in Crime officially was released Tuesday, I wanted to make sure the books were in the store before I started making the rounds to sign stock. So Friday evening, we set out. No matter that it was raining and the some of the leaks in the roof had started to drip again. We just left a lot of plastic bags and containers and hit the road. Recently we replaced Molly’s greenmobile with a sleek black Mercedes SUV. What a nice change. The car seemed to laugh at the rain.


So did we. It was useless to fuss with an umbrella walking from the parking lots to the various stores, so my husband and I sloshed through the puddles enjoying the adventure of being out on the Southern California version of a bad weather night. Of course, it was nothing compared to the blizzard hitting back east. Joanna, I hope you aren’t snowed in.

All in all, we went to the five closest bookstores. All but one had books. The one that didn’t have them was expecting them any day. The two Barnes and Nobles had them on tower display in the front of the store. Bookstar had them in New Mystery. The manager at Borders promised to put them in a special display of signed books. Everyone was very nice about my signing the books and thanked me for coming in. For once I remembered to stick a bookmark in each book.

We ended the evening with a late night dinner at an Israeli restaurant that has a menu option of a selection of salads. Not some small selection either. Twenty different kinds. It was a heavenly feast for vegetarian me with lots of left overs to take home.

There are more bookstores to visit. Maybe next week. And I finished updating my website www.BettyHechtman.com. After much ado about a fuzzy photo, I have pictures of the crochet projects from A Stitch in Crime posted on it.

Me and Martha

Even though I was tired from my Chicago trip and had a ton of things to do, I couldn’t resist when I saw the listing in the Sunday paper. Martha Stewart was doing a book signing for her craft encyclopedia at the Borders in Northridge.

I figured it was research since Molly Pink handles bookstore events in the crochet mysteries. I was curious to see what a real celebrity event was like. I was curious about Martha Stewart, too.

The newspaper said the event started at 3 and that’s when I arrived. There were tons of people there already. I heard a rumor that some people had gotten there at 6 a.m.. I found out the hard way that you couldn’t just get in line for the signing. There was a whole protocol set up. First you had to buy the book, then you stepped over to someone who checked your receipt and gave you a colored wrist band. I got a blue one and was told to hang around where I could hear the loudspeaker for an announcement for my group. I was also given a list of rules. The cut off number for wrist bands was 350. There would be no personalizing of books, and while we could take photos from the line, there would be no posing with Martha.

I found that the yellow wrist bands were already lined up, and the greens who followed them were hanging around waiting to be moved to the staging area. The blues were beginning to congregate behind the greens, so I joined them. Everybody was holding at least one heavy book.

I think it must have been an hour before the blues were moved into the staging area, but the time flew by. Most of the people in line were crafters and we all started talking. The woman behind me was a fellow crocheter and we talked granny squares. I handed out bookmarks for Dead Men Don’t Crochet.

At last we moved up and snaked around the bookshelves close to the signing table. Cameras came out and a bookstore employee checked that our books were all flapped with the front page tucked under the book cover to ensure the book would open right to the signing page.

A bookstore employee greeted each person in the line just as we got within sight of Martha, while a bunch of publicists and assistants hung around the table.

At last my moment was there. Martha looked just like she does on television. She said hello in a friendly voice. She noticed my crocheted flower pin and said I was obviously a crafter. I seized the moment and said I wrote a crochet themed mystery series. She countered by mentioning that they had a needlework encyclopedia coming out next year. She signed my book in green ink that perfecting matched the green in the book. Even after signing countless books, her handwriting was beautiful.

In retrospect, I realize I should have offered her a bookmark, but before I could think about it, my book was back in my hand and I was moving on to the next station where a man with big scissors was clipping off wrist bands and I heard an announcement that the purples were moving into the staging area.

The next day there was an article in the newspaper about the signing. Apparently it was the first time Martha had come to the San Fernando Valley in twenty years and the crowd came from all over, as far as fifty miles away. She was on the Tonight show that night and talked about the book signing and all the people who had showed up. It was neat to hear her referring to something I’d been to.

All in all it was a fun afternoon and I got a lot of ideas for my fictional bookstore events. The craft encyclopedia is great, filled with all kinds of things I’d like to make. And the perfect green ink signature makes it extra special.

I just hope that someday my blog sisters and I have book signings so popular we have to use color coded wrist bands to manage the crowd.