The First Reading- Scum rises to the top!

It is entirely their fault. When I woke up on Friday morning I was done with American Scum. The novel was dead to me. I was excited to get the reading done and be able to lay the book to rest- quietly and totally. I knew in my heart that everyone who showed up to the reading would probably still be my friend after what was going to be an unmitigated disaster. All the little oddities and quirks of my debut novel had grown massive in my mind.

I was suffering from an unpleasant and overwhelming cognitive distortion. This book is terrible, no one will get the joke, no one will see the beauty in such harsh words and bizarre notions. All I could do was go through with the reading and then walk away. Just walk away.

Then they came. About 30 of you. You laughed, you clapped, you did that nodding-sighing-mmhhmm-huhing thing people do at literary type events. You bought all my books. You asked me to sign them.

I read book. You listened, participated, asked interesting questions; you got it, or some semblance of it that meant something to you. I loved it.

Orca Books agreed to start buying the book outright. I’m ready to do readings in other cities. I will hold your friendly faces in my mind as I go out into the wilds of Seattle and Portland. Your support has rekindled my passion for my own work. I am indebted to you all. It took me until now (46 hours later) to come down from the high of performing my novel in front of such lovely and supporting people.

It was a blast. I didn’t even know everyone there! I read a few poems too, from my upcoming collection Overcome Through Constancy. This little book will be available soon (before the end of summer).

Thank you everyone who attended. Thank you Orca Books for being such a wonderful local book store. For those of you who still need to buy your copy, I’ll drop off some more copies there soon. For those of you outside of Oly, check out lulu.com (linked below).

Look out you enjoyers, American Scum has had its coming out party.