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Sunday, September 2, 2007

Faring Well at the Book Fair

I sit here spitting out olive pits while typing this entry. It's Sunday dawn and I've just consumed a plate of leftover pasta from yesterday. My Sister had complained that it's weird to have olives in white pasta, and that the olives were unpitted to boot. Hmm, the things one complains about when one has that luxury.:) The pasta tasted good and I personally think unpitted olives taste better than their pitted counterparts. That's my humble opinion anyway.
So I dragged my little family to the Manila International Book Fair yesterday. What's wrong with my brain that when the publisher sent me a text message asking if I could be there around 2-4, it just zeroed in on 4 and I ended up thinking that the signing would happen from 4 onwards? Please remember this when asking me to relay a message.:)
So we got there late, but I was still able to provide some service. My BFF was there, sadly without her little angel Miguel, but I hadn't seen her in such a long time that I was only mildly disappointed that her kids didn't come along. It's really wonderful to be able to share this experience with her. We live three hours apart and mostly keep the lines of friendship unbroken through YM, email, and SMS. It would be lovely to have her close by, but I guess the positive thing about the distance is that we're always so ecstatic to see each other.
I was finally able to read her story (The authors didn't get complimentary copies this time, but we understand. I do anyway. Our publishers are lovely courageous people and they can count on me to be supportive anytime.) and got such a bout of inferiority complex, it was that good. I feel sorry for my little silly anecdote following hers. I hope it's not too much of a letdown to the readers, lol.
As usual I didn't know what to write. With the last book, I had ended up signing with "Enjoy!" at the Booktopia launch, but this time I felt that might have been presumptuous, so I altered it to read "Hope you enjoy...", lol.
Here are some pics. Husband's flash's batteries died right at the get-go, so some pics are really dark as he wasn't aware that the flash was not working. I'm including dark ones because I want you to see (or semi-see, lol) my BFF (Sister hates for me to "say" this because apparently I'm too "old", hmph) and myself together. the one picture where we were really posing had to be the one that the flash conked out on. Oh well, c'est la vie.


I'm obviously forcing it... but, hey, there's me and her and we're happily smiling... I think.


You can see us better now. :-p


M and myself with our super publishers, whose enthusiasm is inspiring.


I also decided to release my first BookCrossing book at the lounge of the fair. Husband wanted me to be more discreet and skulking as we were pretty conspicuous with Marguerite's huge stroller, her many personal effects, the picture-taking... He was afraid somebody would come rushing after us, yelling, "Miss! You left your book!". If that had happened, which it hadn't, I would have simply explained about BookCrossing, no biggie. I am afraid though that the book would end up at the Lost and Found. Hey, if you decide to go to the fair today, you could look it up, maybe check at the Lost and Found. If it's there, kindly let it loose again. Or maybe you could be the first to pick it up. :-p To "Across the River and into the Trees", fare thee well and have a good journey!


There's me writing, "Check out my blog, yo!"
Then I go, "Are you taking pictures?" to Husband.


There's the label. Yes, the logo is pink because our printer ran out of yellow. It's not because I want it to be girly.
"Am I being subtle?"


Finally, I get ready to walk away. And, no, I'm not pregnant again. Bye, book!

2 comments:

tin said...

hahaha! Nai-imagine ko na si Mark...would it matter if for example I ask Alf to leave a book for me when he go back to HK? or his sister in Netherlands?

spinninglovelydays said...

you can do that. that's even more exciting, really releasing the book into the wild!:)