I'm still pretty stoked about my very first author signing, November 13 at Orca Books in beautiful downtown Olympia. I noticed this afternoon that Orca's website refers to me as "Bremerton's Swift." I can live with that! More testimonials like that, please. I love it!
My current employer, Olympic College in Bremerton, will host a signing the afternoon of December 1 in its bookstore, which, happily, adjoins its Student Center.
Pre-ordering continues at Fear Nought [2]. Remember, each pre-ordered copy of Lightfall will be a signed copy, and shipping is free. Wait: That can't be right. You mean to tell me a signed, first-edition hardcover is only $21.95, and shipping is free?! Surely that must be a misprint....No, I'm being told it is not. Unbelievable.
I'll be in Oklahoma from March 19 to 28, 2010, a trip which will include a signing at the Ada branch of Hastings Books [3] at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 20. That event is a dream come true for me, as I worked at Hastings one summer back in college, imagining the day I might appear there as a real artist. There could also be a special event at my undergraduate alma mater, East Central University in Ada, which will shelve a signed copy of Lightfall in its library's Special Collections. I'll keep you in the loop as I find out more.
So that's me getting and enjoying my props. It's annoying, I know. But guess what? I have a few to give back. As most novels do, Lightfall includes a page of acknowledgments. Some of you are on it, though some of you don't know you are yet. Rest assured I'll send free copies to a handful of you for assistance above and beyond the call of friendship. But it's not a good idea to stuff the end of a book with references only a few people will get, so I'm afraid I was unable to thank many people who really do deserve some recognition. Consider this entry a first attempt at atoning for my unavoidable offense; I'm sure others will follow.
The first person I want to thank is Mr. Rick Qualls, a teacher at Hydesville Elementary (K-8) in Hydesville, CA. Mr. Qualls decided early on that I must be some sort of writer, so he assigned me individual homework toward that end. I wrote and illustrated a book for children called Dreams over the two years he taught me, the seventh and eighth grade. (It was such a tiny school we actually stayed in the same small room two years in a row.) It wasn't as good as Fear Nought author Anna Childs', I admit, but I remember it had its moments. Mr. Qualls always talked to me like a young adult, and I will never forget him or thank him sufficiently. He worked my ass off, but no harder than he worked himself--and that despite a serious struggle with epilepsy. He made a huge impression on my life, and he's probably the biggest single reason why I decided to become an educator.
I wish I could thank every writer I've ever enjoyed, a full list of which would crash this site and probably all of UUNET as well. Ray Bradbury's S Is for Space started the ball rolling thirty-five years ago. I lived for classic sci-fi as a kid: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and a host of subsequent SF Trinitarians including Larry Niven, David Brin, Frederick Pohl, Frank Herbert, Neal Stephenson, Robert J. Sawyer--geez, the list goes on and on. Fantasy authors filled my shelves as well, beginning with the master, J. R. R. Tolkien, and spilling over into Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, Alan Dean Foster, and Neil Gaiman. I still read fantasy and SF, but my tastes as an adult have shifted largely to authors who slide in and out of genre fiction like chameleons: Michael Crichton, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Junot Diaz. My favorite book of all time is still The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the sorely-missed Douglas Adams, and Sarah Vowell is the literary voice of my generation. (Sorry, Coupland and Eggers.)
I've thanked George Lucas and Carl Sagan before--in my graduate thesis, for one--but if you add David Letterman to this paragraph, you've probably named the three biggest non-familial reasons I talk the way I talk, think the way I think, and live the way I live. A mob of comedians are also partly responsible, so blame Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Patton Oswalt, Louis CK, and many others. Comedy is as important as literary fiction to my writing, I find, because it keeps my mind on its toes.
Some will wonder why my father wasn't thanked in Lightfall. Well, it is, after all, a book I dedicated to my mother, but this isn't a case of "Hi, Mom!" in the end zone--I'm actually saving Dad for my guy-friendlier second book.
Shawn Martin, Kevin Worden, Charles Mann, Heather Hammond, Cathlena West, Alan Marshall, Greg Stevens, Cassie Alexander, Eric Moore, Scott Evans, Mark Walling, Bill Zellner, Leslie Martin, Linza Cook, Heather Craig, Tim Goebel, my siblings (Richard, Monica and Andrew), and so many friends over so many years--all of you have affected my thinking, and really, isn't a book just a sloppy conglomeration of everything an author's been thinking?
Finally, thank you, thank you, thank you again to the singular city of Olympia, Washington, for hugging me in and revealing my authorial spirit at last.