November 10, 2007

A busy day today, and it started off well. As a result of sending out the announcement of my third place ranking at Amazon, I received an email from Bill Cohen, owner of Harrington Park Press, to say he was looking into the possibility of a reprint. Yay!

In the afternoon I read at the Toronto Small Press Book Fair in the Annex. I’d been invited to take a table with the other publishers, even though I explained I wasn’t a publisher, just a lowly author. Nevertheless, when I arrived a table had been reserved for Harrington Park Press. I felt like a fraud, but sat and smiled, and happily read when my turn came. (Shane was smarter—when asked why there was only one author represented on the table, he said Harrington published many authors but was proud to be promoting a local author at this event.)

I was thrilled to see Paul Bellini arrive just before I went on-stage and he was kind enough to stay and hear me read the second chapter from P’Town where Bradford describes an entertaining crossing on the Provincetown Fast Ferry as a scantily clad Marilyn impersonator chats him up. (If I say more I’ll give away a plot twist!) The audience was receptive and seemed to get a surprising number of what I’d thought were gay and lesbian in-jokes. I, in turn, stayed to hear some of the other very talented and entertaining readers, though I must say there was a lot of poetry about coffee stains and dangling cigarette ash. Must be a straight in-joke.

I left the fair and hurried over to an interview on Sex City, a radio show on sex, sexuality and culture that’s been running for 10 years on CIUT. Host Bryen Dunn managed to ask all the right questions and not make me feel too awkward as we discussed the book, the Lambda Awards and how I’d come to write The P’Town Murders. I gave a quick précis of the afternoon Shane and I were sitting in the Jacuzzi in Ned Bradford’s Provincetown guesthouse and looked up to see that we were being spied on by someone with binoculars across the way, and how that had been the genesis of the book.

Afterwards, a belated birthday celebration took place at home with the usual hardened criminals: Shane, Omel, Leo, Nicky, Enrique, and Jerri, who sang a marvelous jazz set at my launch last month. Not only were we celebrating my birthday, but my recent Amazon ranking (#3) as well. I guess I wasn’t the only one impressed by it. They’re hoping I’ll become very famous so I can afford to take them on vacation with me wherever I go.