What to remember from the reading tonight:

How to hold a book launch: invite all your friends and family, agents and editors, and thank them, invite people from your writing groups and classes, and online email groups.

Met a woman, 59, red hair, professional event-goer. Aggressive talker - nearly would not let me get a word in edge-wise in her me-me-me fest. She managed to work in age comment so I'd be suitably inpressed with how young she looked. I know this because of how she went on and on about it after I was in awe.

Saw Anne - great story about her daughter, Columbia University, People Magazine, the editor (president) of Sports Illustrated Campus magazine, and her, walking into the Time/Warner/Life/AOL building in NYC, and knocking on all the doors until she found the newly formed mag. Volunteering, getting invited to the Halloween party, finding a conneciton with the guy, then walking up and saying hi. She asks for 15 minutes and gets it, then pitches something, I dont know what, and then he gives her the book report assignment, from the book on the Great Books, the King Lear chapter. How will it turn out. Then she has to counsel a floor full of anxious teens over the death of a student due to anaphlactic shock.

The ice cream cakes that Gus made - one with the knife in it, and the other with the gunshot and the police tape.

40-50 people, all crowded into the small room. Stacks of books.

What else did I learn from this: Probably the story from Anne, about her daughter. Keep trying, don't let anything stand in your way.

Be bold, there is greatness in it.

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© 2003 m. lucas