New Displays for Austin Kleon and the Nebulas, Plus a Revamped One for Christopher Moore.

1. Congrats to William Kent Krueger, winner of the Edgar Award for Ordinary Grace. With that award given out, Krueger moves off the dismantled Edgar nominee table and into our awards case. That leave room for the Nebular Award nominees. The ceremony for that begins May 15. Here are the nominees: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler; The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman; Fire with Fire, by Charles E. Gannon; Hild, by Nicola Griffith; Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie; The Red: First Light, by Linda Nagata; A Stranger in Olondria, by Sofia Samatar; The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecke.

We are so honored to have hosted Krueger for the hardcover tour of Ordinary Grace, and we're hoping that Karen Joy Fowler wins the Nebula, as she did the PEN/Faulkner, so we can say we hosted the winner of that award as well.

2. We rebooted our Christopher Moore display to show off our signed copies of The Serpent of Venice, along with some Shakespearean bounty. The sign accidentally got printed on red paper, and I decided that in this case, it worked.

We had a great time with Moore yesterday. In the heat of the moment, I banned Neil Gaiman from the bookstore. Sorry, Neil! There are plenty of other great stores to visit in the United States.  It's just that I feel so bad that all these great writers like Moore and Terry Pratchett have to live in the shadow of Gaiman. It's just not fair.

I'm assuming that this is not a secret that Moore is currently working on a sequel to A Dirty Job.

3. We've been working hard on our event for Austin Kleon event for Show Your Work next Tuesday, May 6. Mel's been contacting schools and arts groups and even restaurants, at the suggestion of Workman. We decided to have a special creativity display to get a little more attention for the title.

This was one bookseller's first time doing this sort of outreach, and I think she worried that it might seem like telemarketing. She was pleasantly surprised by how many people were excited to hear about the event, which proves the old adage, it ain't spam if you actually actually want it. Kleon's an amazing speaker who can really change the lives of his audience. Plus the event is free. This book is perfect for all kinds of artists of any age, and it also makes a solid graduation day gift.

The corollary to that adage is that it really is spam if we don't want it and there's no effort involved on the part of the center. So please stop robocalling us for credit card processing and other services.

This week another bookseller had a robocaller named "Melissa" who sounded so authentic that he passed the call on to me. It didn't take more than 15 seconds for me to figure out it was automated, but that's partly because I usually take a deep breath before answering the phone; silence really seems to trip up machines.