A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

Apparently, I missed this news the first time it was announced, but I recently found out that SKP is going to be doing a book tour in the US this summer! According to her e-mail newsletter, the paperback edition of Devil's Brood is coming out at the end of July (August for UK), as well as reissues of the other books in the "Eleanor of Aquitaine" series. What's most exciting about this is that SKP will be in MY neighborhood for a signing/talk! (actually, 30 minutes away, but come hell or high water, I'll be there). It's a short tour, so I'm all the more excited for it. Here's the list of where she'll be... OK, now I need to go and crawl out of the cave I've been living in...

Tonight I went to a book signing at Borders at Columbus Circle, with Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul . I missed Karen Abbott when her book was published in hardcover (her book party in New York was held at the Museum of Sex, which for some reason I missed), but now that her book's in paperback, I was excited to go see her read. Actually, it wasn't a "reading" so much as Abbott talking about the book and the impetus behind it. I'm always interested in how authors are inspired to write, and Abbott's book began with some family history: one of her ancestors went to Chicago in 1905 and simply disappeared. While doing research, Abbott ran across the murder of Marshall Field, who was shot in the Everleigh club in the same year Abbott's ancestor disappeared. The resulting book, about a pair of sisters in turn-of-the-century Chicago who ran an upscale brothel and ran into adversity ...

Last night, I went to see Michael Gruber (author of The Book of Air and Shadows , also author of the more recently published The Forgery of Venus ) read and sign his books at Partners & Crime bookstore in the Village. I have to admit here and now that I’ve never read anything he’s written, but I went anyways because, well, book readings are my idea of fun. The talk Gruber gave was pretty casual and liberally sprinkled with humor--literally, toilet humor. He began by talking about art— The Forgery of Venus is about forging a Velazquez painting, and how a forger not only wants to paint like someone, they actually want to be that painter. This, apparently, is one of the major themes of the novel. Then Gruber gave us a history of western art in about three minutes, beginning with the caves at Lascaux and ending with the urinal that was submitted as artwork in the 1920s. Gruber joked about the fact that all his books have “of” in the title—it’s marketing, not him, who decides what t...

Last night I went to a book reading at the Housing Works Bookstore. Located on Crosby Street in SoHo, its a used bookstore associated with the Housing Works thrift stores that uses its proceeds to contribute towards fighting AIDS. The bookstore itself is one of the coolest bookstores I’ve ever been in, with a half-level upstairs with a spiral staircase, and a café at the back. Three authors read from their work, then answered a few questions and signed their books. It was an evening of historical fiction; the authors were Jennifer Cody Epstein (author of The Painter From Shanghai , about a Chinese post-Impressionist painter), Joanna Hershon ( The German Bride , about a German Jewish woman in Santa Fe in the 1860s), and Hillary Jordan ( Mudboud ; about the Mississippi Delta after WWII). After they read, the authors talked a little bit about where they got their inspiration from, and about their writing processes. As a writer myself, its always interesting to hear how other writers writ...