Interesting strange name for a bookstore. I must get to the bottom of the word “Ukazoo” when I’m there tomorrow. Here are the details:
Where & When:
Saturday, January 25, 2014 @ 1–3 p.m.
Ukazoo Books
730 Dulaney Valley Road
Towson, MD 21204
Description:
Meet Matthew Warner and Deena Warner, author and illustrator respectively of THE SEVENTH EQUINOX, the new urban fantasy novel from Raw Dog Screaming Press.
Wait a minute. They have the same last name. That can’t be a coincidence. It’s a conspiracy, but . . . no, this isn’t that kind of book. It’s set in the Shenandoah Valley, and it’s about a young divorcee who moves into a Victorian house, and she finds a demigod living in the caverns connected to her root cellar, and —
What’s that you say? Towson, MD, isn’t anywhere near the Shenandoah Valley, VA? Then what are these people doing so far from home? Conspiracy! It’s . . .
A chance to eat chocolate chip cookies and buy a book. Yep.
Yes, I wrote that myself, as you can probably tell. Let me know if you’re coming by joining the Facebook event page about it.
After the signing, Deena and I will amble over to the ninth annual Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers, where we hope to visit with Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and this year’s grunts. I attended the first boot camp in 2005 and had a great time. (Feel free to read my Hellnotes Newsletter article about it.) On Sunday morning, I’ll be the guest performer of the short stories the grunts will have written that weekend — meaning that I’ll be doing anonymous, cold reads of the manuscripts (aloud) to facilitate a critiquing free-for-all. Hearing someone interpret your story in a dramatic reading is a great way to develop your writing; does my words’ inflection come through properly on paper? Always a lot of fun.
I hope my voice will be back at full strength by then. Last weekend, I drilled the “throat crusher” choke too many times in jiu-jitsu class and developed a wicked case of laryngitis as a result. I never would have guessed that being choked could do that to you. Good reference for a future story.
Last night, I was the guest of a private book club, which met at a cozy house here in Staunton. We spent a lot of time discussing the writing process — but it was strange at one point to hear the ladies discussing The Seventh Equinox as if I wasn’t there, making conjectures about character histories and talking about whether they liked a particular character. It was a bit like being at the Borderlands Boot Camp, in a way. Strange, sure, but a rare privilege.
