Book Signing…

I had my book reading/signing at Prairie Lights today. Seven people came. And they were all friends of mine. My good friend, K., said, “Hey, at least you have friends!” This is true. Still, it’s awfully depressing. I tried to tell Gung-Ho-Sales-Rep-Guy (who wants to set up book signings for me far and wide!) that nobody comes to book store signings…we’ll see if I do better at the North Liberty library event with the fire fighter in June.

Still, I’m glad I did this reading/signing, though, because something really cool happened while I was there. I was signing stock for Prairie Lights after most of the people had left, and as I was finishing up, somebody came to pick up the last friend who was still there. I’d never met this person before. She glanced at the one copy of My Grandpa had a Stroke that was sitting on the table in front of me (I was actually there to talk about F is for Fire Fighting rather than My Grandpa had a Stroke) and said, “where did this book come from?”

I started to tell her about how my dad had had a stroke seven years ago and how I couldn’t find a book to read to my children that would explain to them what had happened; why Grandpa was suddenly so different…and she cut me off. She said, “I’m the therapist you contacted a while back. I looked at these pages for you!”

How cool is that??? I had actually contacted several physicians and physical therapists via e-mail to look at a couple of the illustrator’s sketches and check them for accuracy (the publisher asked me to do this)…I didn’t know any of the people who responded. What are the odds that one of them would walk into Prairie Lights to pick up a friend who had come to my reading/signing (a reading/signing for ANOTHER book!) and happen to see My Grandpa had a Stroke and make that connection? I love when things like that happen. I love finding cool connections between people.