Not an actor, but I did ok.

So readings aren't my best thang, but this one turned out pretty nicely. There weren't a lot of people there, but enough to make it a good event. Thank you to the folks who did show up. Nobody threw stuff at me while I was up there, so that's cool. It was a coffee house, so there was the occasional blender to deal with. On the good side, that gave me the chance to scream lines from my book such as Bob Rothbard's "Go around me ASSHOLE!" from Howling Legion. Big stress reliever. The last word in that quote was delivered to the dude sitting along the wall who refused to stop talking on his cell phone while Matt Rotundo was reading. Heh.

I had a peanut butter / chocolate chiller which was excellent. Cut down on the sweat factor after walking through the sweltering Old Market. This weekend is another reading at OSFest, which I don't expect to get a huge turnout for. It's at 11 PM on Friday. A bad spot, but my choosing since I insisted on rescheduling so I could take part in the "Vampires Don't Sparkle" panel. Worst case scenario: I show up, nobody else does, I leave. No biggie. More on OSFest later...

I am not an actor

Today I'm headed off to do a reading at the 13th Street Coffee House in the beautiful Old Market district in downtown Omaha. I think I've been to the place before, but I've definitely been to the Old Market several times. It's a shopping district with cool stores, funky restaurants and cobblestone streets. There's a great pub called The Dubliner which I've featured in one of my earlier books that was never published. Since MEG has a branch in Omaha, maybe I can fit the place into Skinners before too long.

No matter how nice the venue is, however, I hate doing readings. They really make me appreciate little things like annunciation and voice inflection. The worst part is reading dialogue where there's banter between two characters. Do I just pause between lines to tell the difference between characters when two people are talking? Do I try to do different voices? For Paige do I try a woman's voice? Can I come up with more ways to make my own books sound horrible?

Hopefully it goes all right. Next weekend is the OSFest convention with...you guessed it...another reading! I feel Like I HAVE to do these as part of the whole process. On the good side, I love getting out to meet readers so that should be fun. The only thing I need is for readers to actually show up to thee things. That's always the tricky part.