Thank You, Friends AND Strangers!

Last Thursday’s reading at Rockland Library brought some great questions from an audience of friends and strangers. A lovely and welcoming library, the place is special to me because for years I’ve attended meetings of the Rockland Shakespeare Society in the same room where I spoke about MORTAL THINGS.

For authors on the less well-known side, a book’s sales life begins with friends. But authors hope their book’s appeal extends beyond their friendship network, no matter how large and devoted that group may be. So, thank you to the folks who read about the event and made it to Rockland Library. You made me smile and think. You also made it easy to read and to talk about these characters that have kept me up at night for decades. Here’s a link for a video of the whole event: https://youtu.be/xMdoA94C0aA

Saturday’s Portland adventure brought me and MORTAL THINGS to different ground. I knew no one there, but enough people found reason to purchase a copy of MT to empty an entire stack of them. Bless you.

Chatting one-on-one about my novel and about fiction in general turned strangers into friends. Conversations sprawled into expected and unexpected regions, all leading to smiles. Passionate readers all, they told me what (and who) they liked to read, and I offered suggestions, prompting one buyer of my novel to also purchase Maine novelist Susan Conley’s Landslide, recently released in paperback, and another to take home fellow Mainer Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, which I’d purchased for myself minutes earlier.

We did what book lovers do. We talked about the ones we love and the ones we can’t wait to read. Freshly bought books bring us a kind of hope. To those strangers who made me feel at home, thank you. Enjoy your reading!   

Thanks for reading this post. If you like it, I hope you’ll follow me on Twitter @nedbachus, at nedbachus.com, and that you’ll Like the Facebook Page, Open Admissions.

Mortal Things, my novel, can be ordered online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org at the bottom of this link:  https://www.treeoflifetreeofjoy.com/mortal-things OR you can order it at your favorite local independent bookstore!