Camp day

Three days in a row proved to be an obstacle that I chose not to attempt.  Two days was pretty hard.

Instead we had a date at the local book store.  The local newspaper published notice of the appearance of our favorite writer within a mile of where we live.  I immediately started to re-read his most recent Davenport novel.  I have not read the most recent Flowers book yet and with the new Davenport it looks like we may be setting up for a classic reading festival with most of the readers not having read either of the two most recent Davenport and/or the most recent Flowers.  That will be three books for the rest of you while I will only have two.

Left to right, one year old Davenport, most recent Flowers, brand new Davenport.

He is an interesting guy in addition to being our favorite writer.  Every time I attend one of these I note and find interesting that the audience has many people who have often been there before but also a sprinkling of very young people who were probably not yet able to read when his first novel was published.

He talks for a few minutes but prefers to answer questions.  One of the first questions revealed that he is within a week or two of completion of the writing of the next Flowers, to be published in the fall.  He says that he writes nearly every day and thinks about the writing projects every day.  He said that his biggest problem is devising interesting villains.  He has one in mind for the next Davenport book some of the plot of which he shared with this gathering of his fans.  He has a working title, "Neon Prey".  The plot line that he does have in mind includes a starting point in Minnesota, plot development in Los Angeles with a conclusion in Las Vegas.

He told a story that I had heard before.  Before he was a novelist he was writing for the local newspaper and produced a series that won a Pulitzer prize.  The newspaper responded by giving him a raise that left him still making less than two writers on the sports desk.  He said that he didn't really resent the sports guys, they were both really good writers.  But he did note that even with the raise he wasn't going to be making enough money to pay for his two kids to go to college.  He started fishing for some non-newspaper writing projects.  He got an agent, wrote some stuff and kept working.

A member of the audience asked when he knew he had found something that he could do outside the newspaper.

His response was that it occurred when his agent asked if he could produce something more along the lines of what he had already written.  His agent informed him that if he could that he would be paid $200,000.

That was the moment.

When we got to the front of the line the book store staff took my phone and produced a quite satisfactory photo of the three of us.

I have been several times, TOPWLH not as many but she is not a new face.  We both had heart felt exclamations to the author about how much pleasure the reading of his work has provided for us and our family over the years.  Praise which he graciously accepted.  During our very brief moment with him TOPWLH volunteered to the author the name of our daughter and received in return the expected response that his daughter has the same name.  We knew that.  He autographed his newest book for our daughter.

We had a nice night out at the local bookstore.