More slight significance

And there was this time when I had been booked to be the key-note rock star author at a children’s literature conference in Oregon—they flew me there, met me with a shuttle.  Oh, yeah. “This way, Ms. Randle.”  And then the shuttle dropped me at the designated motel, where they wouldn’t take me to my room till I gave them my credit card.

First class, all the way.  I did not end up having to actually pay for the room.  But the lady at the desk wasn’t interested in my status as visiting dignitary.

And the time when I  won the California Young Reader’s award.  That’s a really nice award, and it kind of came out of the blue.  What I didn’t know was that the Cal Librarians’ and reading teachers’ group is so big, they break into two age group halves – the grammar school bunch and the middle-to-high school group – and they trade off hosting the convention every other year.  So somehow, my award fell during the grammar school year.  There I was, sitting at a table mounded with my YA novels—an hour and a half, desperately and apologetically trying to entertain my handler so she wouldn’t fall asleep in her chair.  I must have signed at least – oh, five books that evening.  While the picture book authors, sitting over there, had lines that wound around the building and down the block.

Oh, yeah – and when I got to the airport for that one, there was nobody to meet me.  Actually, there evidently was a limo waiting, but nobody told me about it, so I wound up hunting down a shuttle to take me, thirty people and several crates of chickens down to my huge hotel.  Or what I hoped was my huge hotel.  The handlers didn’t find me till I was standing in this huge line, juggling bags, waiting to sign in for a room.  Happily, I didn’t have to leave my credit card for that one.

I was supposed to hang with this group of east coast kids’ authors who all knew each other.  Most of them, I hadn’t heard of.  One of them had offered to agent me once, but had sat on my stuff for months and months before I gave up and asked for it all back again; she didn’t remember me.  I was supposed to be the bride and groom on the wedding cake for this bash, but sitting at dinner, I was reminded most painfully of every flipping year I spent in High School, not getting any of their inside jokes, and pretty sure I was part of the punch line.

I tried to be cool with them.  We took a tour of the aquarium which was totally amazing.  There was this one totally gorgeous little brilliant, fluted yellow fish in one small tank; I leaned over and said, “Oh, my GRACE, he’s beautiful.”  The woman who hadn’t remembered me blinked down at me then – I mean, since it hadn’t come out OMG (I have this thing about insulting the creator of the universe) – and said,  “You’re so quaint.”  

She’d have joined the fish if it hadn’t been a sealed tank.

I suppose she didn’t like it much when that night, as we walked back to the hotel across the acres of parking lot, I asked her if she’d ever seen the Little Golden Book, maybe thirty years old, that had had exactly the same plot gimmick as her own very successful series of books.  No, no – she’d never seen it.  Of course, she hadn’t.

And let me tell you this—if you’re ever in a book store where they’re having a book signing, either don’t go in at all, or take some – like, McDonald’s gift certs or a candy bar or something with you—so as you drift past the poor, desolate soul who is sitting there behind a table piled with signed books you’ve never heard of and aren’t about to buy, you can drop a little token of sympathy in her lap.  Brighten up the endless hours a little.

I have friends who turn their book signings into something like a snake oil show – take the mic and really do it up.  But not many people can pull that off.  Come to think of it, I have only one friend who can do that, and he’s a music guy.  Authors don’t tend to be real – spotlight folks.  And most of them feel stupid, having to talk up their own work.  Reading is just such a personal thing—not like an onion slicer, or a furmenator, something you can really hawk. “Hey—this Mike Tibbs?  Hottest little hunk of man-candy you’ll ever find between covers, I promise.  Getcher angst here—”

One time I was sitting in a tiny Deseret Book, well aware that my New York published books were not going to draw a lot of locals at that location – right across the aisle from where James Christensen, who was a then a bit of a passing acquaintance, was busy signing dozens of his pricy, framed prints with his gorgeous gold leaf pen.  So I went and sat as his table and pretended to be his secretary.

One time, somehow, I ended up on a well-known female SF writer’s website.  I think I must have been following somebody’s link or something.  The page I saw was this open letter to her fans in which she proceeded to say some of the rudest most deprecating things ever.  She was evidently not charmed by the mail she was getting – and yes, people do ask the same things over and over – like “How did you get the idea for the book?”

This is not a question I’d ever ask any artist of any stripe.  “How did you get an idea?”  How does anybody get an idea for anything – a business, an outfit, a new dish for din-din?  How do you know when it’s time to stop looking at a sunset, or to start looking for a new car?  So anyway, yes, I can see that she’d get tired of answering some things.  But to be so rude about it. So impatient and insulting.  And to the people who had made her a Significant Person.  Without them, what is she?  If she treats real people the way she treats her poor fan-base, lonely is probably the answer. (She lives alone in Wales with twelve cats, a dragon and several dwarves.)

Now, “fan” is really a derivative of “fanatic,” a word that doesn’t appeal to me.  What I hope for is readers.  Readers and thinkers.  Conversation. Connections that result in new perspectives.  That’s the fun of it.

I will admit that I love speaking to groups of people.  I love running workshops and talking about the effect of language and story on kids’ heads.  I even enoy being on panels at conventions and conferences – it’s fun, and you can be really funny doing these things.  On the way home from Dallas this last time, I spent the whole flight talking to the young author sitting next to me (yeah, I snuck a look at her computer as she was writing and struck up the conversation) about good sentence structure and plot points.  I’m not sure I care about being recognized or whatever.  But being given opportunities to do these other things – that’s worth the work of wrestling with plots and characters.  And if you can make a little money on the side?  Yeah.  That’s nice.

But this is the fame I love best: when you’re in the mall, and some little kid from your ward sees you in the middle of all the people and launches herself at your knees and beams up at you like she’s just seen the sun.  Now, that’s cool.