I never got into book signings until later in life. As a child, it never occurred to me that this was a thing. Having been in the writing industry for a number of years, I now enjoy a good signing. It's a chance to meet authors face to face (if only briefly). Even in short time periods, you get a sense of an author's sincerity and authenticity.
Now that I'm a mom with a rambunctious almost-three-year-old, I've asked authors to sign books to the future him. It's been remarkable to see award winning writers write cool notes to the little guy. Hopefully these will inspire him one day.
Here are a few:
Animals Anonymous, Richard Michelson, award-winning poet
Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Non-Fiction
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Fiction
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James, Man Booker Prize Winner, Fiction
I am...
Last year's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer, begins with the following paragraph:
I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some may have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you--that is a hazard, I must confess. But in the month when this confession begins, my way of seeing the world still seemed more of a virtue than a danger, which is how some dangers first appear.
I love it when a novel begins with a confession about a personal trait in a way that we are forced to re-examine the virtue of the trait and question the narrator from the get-go (think Nick in The Great Gatsby). Today, I think I'm going to write one of these paragraphs for my mc in my WIP. It won't be the first paragraph, and I doubt it'll make it into the novel, but I'm excited to learn what secrets my mc will or will not reveal to me...
Feel free to join me and do the same on this lovely fall Monday. :)
