Serendipity

I am wearing two hats right now. On one hand I am working hard to finish my next manuscript which is due December 1, and at the same time, since I had two books released last week, I'm making the rounds of local bookstores to sign stock.

It's always an adventure. Sometimes more than others. I am lucky someone in my family comes along. More than comes along, they do the driving, the routing, abd figure in coffee and ice cream stops. It is surprising how tiring going to four bookstores in a day can be.

On Tuesday, we went to the Barnes & Nobles in and around the western part of L.A. It was exciting to see Behind the Seams on an endcap at the Marina del Rey store. The Santa Monia store had You Better Knot Die displayed on the tower. When we left that store, we decided to get a little food before moving on and picked a place across the way. It turned out they were filming a TV show in the restaurant. We figured why not and signed a release and had our picture taken and sat down at the sushi bar. They had been pretty vague about what the TV show was and just said there would be some singing and dancing.

I was thrilled because the book I'm manuscript I'm rushing to finish has a TV shoot in it. So, I was checking out the crew and their equipment. The restaurant is supposed to look like a couryard somewhere in Southeast Asia. So there is a center square and what looks like a veranda running around three sides. The veranda portion had a few booths filled with people. The center square had a number of table and they were all filled. If we turned around at the sushi bar, we had a view of the whole place.

Anything with TV seems to take forever. I'd long since finished my vegetable roll when a guy I assume was the director said something about it being a hot set. I turned around to see what was going to happen. A woman had a microphone on a tray and put it on the table right in front of us that had a couple sitting at it. The man picked it up and started to sing. Someone wisked their table away as all the people at the other tables got up and started singing and dancing in a what could only be described as an elaborate productrion number. Even the sushi chef turned out to be a performer. It seemed like the only people not singing and dancing were us.

The woman who'd been sitting with the man who became the lead singer, was helped up on a table as the production number continued. Finally the guy singer took out a ring box and proposed.

The music stopped and a man I suppose was the host of the show joined the happy couple. Of course, she said yes. They were joined by a singing and a dancing coach who'd prepared the guy for the production number. Then we found out what was going on. The guy was a comedian and had told his girlfriend someone was making a documentary about him, but it was all a set up for the production number proposal.

The one good thing was that since it was a set up, they could only shoot it once.

I don't know what the show is called. We just remember it was something the musical. Anyway, we had fun.

And then we went on our way to the next B & N.

And I had some happy news. You Better Knot Die was #7 on the Barnes & Noble mass market mystery bestseller list and Behind the Seams was #21 on the Barnes & Noble hardcover mystery bestseller list.