Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival - Saturday!

There are some tough choices to be made this weekend. On one hand, one of my favorite book festivals is scheduled in one of my favorite get-away towns, Santa Barbara. Here is list of authors who will be attending. I really want to meet Rudolpho Anaya. Bless me Ultima was the first book I read in Spanish and the first of the magic realism genre. I will looking forward to talking to Jan Burke, David Corbett, Jerilyn Farmer, Sue Grafton, Denise Hamilton, Harley Jane Kozak, Eddie Muller, Jeff Parker, Barbara Seranella, John Shannon, April Smith, and children's author Lee Wardlaw. The best part is you never know who is just going to show up.

The draw of this festival is that it is small, a few hundred people. The weather is usually a factor, one year it rained, the following year was a heat wave, so this year should be perfect. The atmosphere is casual and everyone is like family.

On the other hand, around the same time on Saturday, Denise Mina will be in town at the Mystery Bookstore along with Margaret Coel, Tess Gerritsen and Joseph Garber of Whirlwind fame. I believe this is Mina's first tour of the west coast and just love her books.

To complicate matters further, at Mysteries To Die For is David Wolstencroft, Good News, Bad News.

I'm open for suggestions...


Next up.... Allan Folsom

I'm excited about this event tomorrow night at the Mystery Bookstore. Folsom will be signing his new tome, The Exile. I read my first Folsom book, The Day After Tomorrow, back in the early 90's. These are large books, in the 700+ page range and take me a week to get through, but what a wonderful vacation.

Paris Hilton ...The Signing Update

Well, We made it down to the signing at Book Soup in Hollywood. The usually assortment of fans were there in their most excited state. There were rules for this signing and NO PHOTOS allowed. So there are none.

The most exciting part of this signing was the protest crowd standing on the other side of Sunset in front of Tower Records. They made signs and were chanting.. "What has Paris done for you today" or "Paris read a book instead of writing one". The best was the taut to the people in line to "make sure that you get her video signed."

E Channel had a reporter outside the store interviewing people as they exited the signing. Questions ranged from "Did she sign your book in crayon?" to "Is this the stupidest thing you have ever done?" You will need to watch E to be amazed by the responses. I was.

Never the less, Once inside the store, Paris was friendly and my two kids were thrilled to get a signed second printing of her book. The things we parents do for our kids.

The highlight of the evening for me???? Well on the way there I was listening to perenial hard rock station KLOS and I won the new Sammy Hagar CD The Essential Red Collection and I'm in the final for an all expense paid weekend in Cabo with Sammy Hagar in October. How cool is that???

Monday, September 13, 2004

Next up..Paris Hilton

One of the great things about having teenage daughters is that you get to part with your money in some fairly consistent ways. But now I have to stand in line on the Sunset Strip so my daughter Brooke can meet her idol.

Well, maybe there will be pictures of this, but who knows. I'll let you know later.

Monk, nah...not the TV show....

Well, if you were not at the Mystery Bookstore on Saturday afternoon, you missed it. The great Gary Phillips had a signing party for his new book Monkology, a short story collection about the talented PI Ivan Monk. There was the Monkology band playing for the first hour and the book contains a specially arranged music for Monk by Jeff Weber.



The man himself... Gary reading from Monkology.

Dennis Mc Millan, publisher of Monkology.

Jeff Weber who produced the CD that is available with the book. DO NOT MISS THIS......
The great Robert Ward ( of Red Baker fame)

The man who illustrates many of Dennis McMillan books, Michael Kellner.

Gary and crew signed several hundred books. This is my copy.

Everyone is this picture was involved in some aspect of this project.
Monkology was signed by all contributors and is available through Dennis's website. There are only 700 copy of the first edition available and very few of the custom handcrafted limited editions. I stayed up all night on Saturday and read them all and I still want more.

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