OMG!! I'm a real writer!

So the Kane family descended en masse on our little town center today. Faerie has a "Cowboys & Indians"-themed costume birthday party to go to tomorrow, and we headed for the party store to see if we could find her a costume. (I wanted her to be a Native American princess--I had lovely dreams of doing her hair in little braids with a feather headdress, and putting little lipstick stripes on her face, but she insisted she wanted to be a cowgirl instead. Sigh.)

Anyway. We got the costume. Then we headed for the high street, where, ironically enough, they had some Argentinian Indians (I have no idea if I'm being PC here or what but they call themselves Indians on the liner notes, so I figured that's what I should put) a musical performance and selling CDs, one of which I bought, because it's lovely instrumental stuff and is perfect for the New Project stirring around in my crazy little head. Anyway.

Visited the health-food store to get dried fruit for Princess. Since she's in Year Three now we have to provide snacks for snack time, and of course her teacher will think we're the scum of the earth is we give her potato chips or cookies or something, so we're heavily into dried fruit. Bought several bags of assorted snack items.

The health-food store is a couple of doors down from the Waterstone's. Hubs asked if I wanted to go in. No, that's okay. No, he insists. Etc. etc. The upshot is, he twisted my arm and we went in.

I of course headed for the Horror section, which is where they shelf their UF stuff. I hemmed and hawed for a minute or so, and was just about to turn to leave, when I glanced at the bottom shelf.

And saw my book.

MY book.

Now keep in mind, UF isn't very big here in the UK. Keep in mind Juno doesn't do much distribution outside the US and they're a small house. So while I've gotten pictures of my book on store shelves, and of course my BFF Cori took a little video of her buying a copy of the book, I have never physically seen it, on the shelf, in a store.

I "Oh my God!"ded for a second, picked it up, flipped through it. I literally thought for a minute I was going to pass out. And then I hurried my little bottom to the cashier's desk, and told the guy behind the counter that this was my book (I showed him my picture in the back and everything) and if he had a pen I'd sign it.

He told me he'd actually ordered three of them, as the genre was showing some growth in the UK and there are some fans in the store as well as, apparently, in town. He ordered three, two had already sold(!!!)

The thing is, I haven't seen the book in any other stores. I just find it so insane that of all the Waterstones's in England, the one with my book just happens to be my local one. I still can't get my head around that, seriously. And people have bought them!

Then he asked if I wanted to do a signing when Demon Inside is released, which, ACK! (Signings scare the hell out of me, because I honestly picture myself sitting alone in the back of the store, while everyone pities me for being such a loser and so full of myself I actually think people would care about me or my dumb book.)

And we chatted for a minute, and I met the girl who'd shelved the book who told me she'd looked at the back when she stocked it and couldn't wait to read it, and I gave them my email address and plugged several of my friends, and left feeling simultaneously like the coolest person in the world and an enormous geek who'd just made a moron out of myself.

Oh, and forgot to even ask his name. So I ran back in to do that, and offered to take a bunch of my wristband bracelets in for them, and there you go.

So I actually saw my book on a shelf in a real bookstore, and people have actually bought it. And he's going to order more and I'll go in and sign those too.

Then we went to Tesco to get safety pins, and they didn't have any, so I went to Boot's for them.

So, to recap my day:

Bought cowgirl outfit
Bought CD of tribal music
Bought dried pineapple chunks
Bought safety pins
Signed my actual book in an actual store


It was a pretty good day.