On Jesse Ball's Event Last Night and Several Notable People in Attendance--Which Has to Do a Bit with the New Email Newsletter.

It's finally done and sent out, and who knows what errors lie within.  At the last minute, Anne caught that I wrote that Christopher Buehlman's event for Those Across the River was on Saturday, September 10, in the evening.  No, it's 2 pm!  Hooray, one less problem.

I couldn't make a mistake on Mr. Buehlmann's event because he's because a regular attendee at events.  Last night I ran into him at Jesse Ball's reading of The Curfew.  He's also a poet, which I failed to mention in most of our materials, even though he had a brand new poetry collection out, The Village on Horseback.

Oy, Ethan (our friend at Milkweed), can you forgive me?  At least we had the book on hand, and sold several at the event and a few more beforehand.  Like the novels, The Village on Horseback is "strange, haunting, and hard to describe."  I'm not sure if his revenge scenario poem is in there or not.  It's strange, haunting, and quite funny.

At one point, Ball mentioned he wrote a big sprawling epic fantasy novel, which he was not able to get published. No wonder Buehlman was in attendance--Those Across the River isn't exactly epic fantasy, but it is epic-y.  It's the story of a war vet who moves to a small Southern town of his ancestors, and starts doing research on the plantation his family once owned.  The secrets unearthed are nothing short of...horrific.  I'm expecting to get a read on this one shortly.  Then I'll be able to use quote marks from Jason, or perhaps Greg.

Oh, one other coincidence. A customer who was also recognizable as an Alterra barrista, was browsing the store, as she does on occasion.  I finally asked her name, and she told me (it's Patty, but I don't know the spelling), but that she no longer worked at Alterra, having moved to Chicago to go back to school. And then later on, Mr. Ball introduced her as his best student. Patty, one day you might be the Jesse Ball of the evening.

So here's our new newsletter, for the seven of you who read the blog but don't subscribe to our emails.  There shouldn't be much you don't already know, aside from some new book writeups.