Tag: Utica

I remember the first time I beheld a signed copy of a popular novel. It was one of those Lawrence Block tomes about a seedy character named Matthew Scudder, books that I used to eat up like Frosted Flakes. They were vapid, but somehow kept my interest the way few books did in the early ’90s. Then, I saw a book in a bookstore (I don’t even remember what book it was, but it was in Borders) that had a sticker on its cover that proudly read “Autographed Copy.” I wondered at how a book could blatantly lie like that, but then when I opened the cover, there it was, just as advertised, the author’s signature. I thought, “It’s got to suck to be famous because everyone wants a piece of you,” and then I realized that particular author wasn’t famous. Oops.

Then I became an English teacher and headed off to the mecca of all English teacher hangouts, the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) national conference, held in Pittsburgh one year. At the conference, to my great surprise, were all kinds of authors who sat at booths at prescribed times, and, you’ll never believe this, SIGNED BOOKS FOR TEACHERS. I know. I’m still trying to catch my breath over that one, and this was a number of years ago when I was at the Pittsburgh conference. I was like a kid in a candy store. I met Nicholas Sparks, Lois Lowry, Laurie Halse Anderson, that guy who wrote the Uglies series, and many more. I was hooked. Continue reading “Lights! Camera! Autographs!”