My sister asked me if 2nd & Charles has a section for local authors, and if they might host some sort of event like that. I looked this morning all over the store, and found the regional section all the way in the back, between the clearance section and the essay collections. By the time I made it back to the front, I had forgotten about it. So... that's two Augusta bookstores with regional sections, and I still haven't notified either that I have a book coming out.
The only other bookstore is Barnes & Noble, and I don't think I'm quite big enough to get a spot with them yet. Then again, there is Good Books... the used bookstore sharing space with Augusta's Goodwill store, but I'm not sure if they do book signing events or not...
In other news, it's been a bookish weekend. I've acquired 28 books over the past three days (I bought 13 and picked up 13 for free, plus I got a couple in the mail yesterday), with the intent of giving most of them away.
I made trips from Thursday to Saturday to Goodwill, The Book Tavern, and 2nd & Charles (two days in a row!), plus got one of my five new-to-me Ray Bradbury books yesterday in the mail. Speaking of mail, had I known I'd be receiving a box of trades from my friend Kasey, I wouldn't have gone to 2nd & Charles first thing yesterday morning. I took part in their "Buy 5, Get 5 Free" sale, plus fished a couple books out of the free bin. After I got that box in the mail, I opened it and kicked myself for not waiting. There was one book (Marvel's Runaways) that I kept, plus the You've Got Mail DVD, which I gave to my mother. The rest were traded. This morning, I took that stuff BACK to 2nd & Charles.
But yeah, out of the entire 28, I decided to give four of them away. I bought a Grisham book for my mom at Goodwill, and found two more for her in the free bin (Nora Roberts and MS Office 2007), plus one for the retiree my dad visits in the nursing home that I also found in the free bin. He likes war novels, so I picked up one such for him today.
Out of the remaining 24, I have seven that I've already put in the All Hallows Read box: a Charles de Lint werewolf book and a middle-grade collection of weird tales (Goodwill Thursday), Christopher Pike's Last Act (free bin yesterday), Crichton's Jurassic Park and Prey, Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (yesterday's 2nd & Charles purchases).
Out of the remaining 17, I have another eight maybes for All Hallows Read that I want to read first: "James Patterson's" Witch & Wizard, Poe's Spirits of the Dead, and Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane Vol. III (yesterday's 2nd & Charles purchases), The Original Duct Tape Halloween Book and the graphic novels The Astounding Wolf-Man, Zombies Calling, and Bram Stoker's Dracula (today's 2NC purchases), and Kasey's hand-me down copy of Runaways.
I plan to attempt to read the remaining nine books: 21 Years of The Onion: The Front Pages, Ray Bradbury's A Memory of Murder (plus the others I ordered on the first), Melville's Billy Budd & Other Stories, Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Clive Barker's Everville and Books of Blood Vol 2, Robert McCammon's Mine, F. Paul Wilson's The Touch, and Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. If I find the task too daunting, I'll just stick the horror books in a bag to offer parents and older siblings of trick-or-treaters on Halloween. In fact, even if I do read them, I plan on giving the horror titles away anyway.
I have a few other "AHR maybes" set aside to read. It's a LOT to read over the next three months or so, and with my sweetie moving down here soon, I'm not sure I'll have time! I'll have to read the graphic novels first... Those are quick reads.
So there you have it. Out of nearly 30 books I've acquired this weekend, I'm only planning to keep A Memory of Murder and maybe a few others if I read and enjoy them. Odds are, I'll read them... and then trade them in for something new. hehe