Doing the events for Sand in My Bra this week is every bit of a Homecoming for me. Buy your tickets, bring a date — or go stag, and dance it up.
Lee Azus, owner of Get Lost Books & Maps gave me a warm intro and told the audience that I had been speaking there since the store opened in ’97. He also brought to attention my involvement in Stories of World Travel and that it had been their best seller for 2002. Get Lost is a cozy travel specific shop with two floors on the edge of the Castro district. The events are done on the upper level in between a wall of bookshelves and dressers full of maps.
I will admit I was a bit concerned when I only saw my friend Sally and the contributors as I walked in only ten minutes before 7pm. But the room quickly filled to twenty, twenty five, and ladies kept coming in all the way up till near the end of the program which had me reading additional snidbit after tidbit. Thirty was the final count with five books sold that night. Not a lot, but they had sold out their first order in the previous weeks and had ten left that they new they wouldn’t be returning.
Kate Crawford, winner of last year’s Book Passage Travel Writers Conference writing contest was just back from her RTW trip and gave a fun read. Colette O’Connor, TT contributor , and author of several award winnign lifestyle features drove up from Santa Cruz to read. As for me, I realized that my story, “A Prude in Patpong,” is not nearly as funny outloud as it is on paper, so I won’t be reading it anymore. Women just don’t respond to the “p” word, and I don’t like saying it either.
But the crowd was definitely laughing at everything else. Today I asked what I could’ve done better and Krista made the excellent suggestion to have questions for the contributors ready if the audience is a little slow with the hand raising. Inviting the contribies to talk about their most hair raising or mindnumbing experiences could put a shy crowd to ease.
For those single heterosexual men in San Francisco, (come on, there must be a couple), these Sand events are a good place to check the scene. Two men were in the audience last night. Sure they were TT fans, but hey, they were still laughing right along with the femmes.