Susan's Back and feelin' like a star!
Hey everyone, did you miss me? What’s that? You say you didn’t even know I was gone? That whizzing sound you hear is my ego flying around the room backward until there’s nothing left but its little eyes bugging out.
It got inflated in the first place on the Kmart Sizzling Summer Reads Author Tour. Believe me, around the Andersen household I don’t often hear the words, “Whatever you want. I’m here to take care of you.” But Levy, the wholesaler who gets the books we luv to read into the Walmarts, Kmarts and Targets, etc, hosted a 14 author bus tour and, boy, did they take care of us! Their team, po
wered by Pam Nelson, is one well-oiled machine. (That's Crystal, DeVar and Justine in the back row, Janet, Pam, Kathleen and Emily on the futon)
Okay, sure, we had to get up before 4 a.m. --before 4 A.M.!!-- two days in a row and pretty much lived out of a suitcase. It was so worth it. We talked at libraries and sold at Kmarts, and the media coverage garnered for this tour was phenomenal. The first early call was for an appearance on an ABC Chicago morning show. It lasted all of about 7 minutes, but it was cleverly done and not at all condescending, and that is A Very Good Thing. We also had a reporter and the Assistant Advertising Director from Publishers Weekly traveling with us for part of the trip, so we may see some future coverage from that. Then there was the two page spread in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Detroit Free Press, plus a TV crew at one (or was it two?) of the signings and that's not even mentioning the food and omigawd, I think my head is starting to swell up again.
Um, ‘scuse me a second, will you—I've gotta take this call, it's the Soul Mate. He probably wants to know if there's anything I need. “Hey there. Queen Susie speaking. . .What?”
Oh. (whizzzz) “No, I haven't seen your blue shirt. Queens don't concern themselves with. . . What? Dinner? You want me to cook? But no one expected me to do that last week—they simply took me out to great restaurants." Sigh.
Still, more important than the food (and believe me, there is little I fin
d more imperative than my meals) was the opportunity to get to know my sister travlers on the Love Bus: Mary Balogh (the real queen), Allison Brennan, Pamela Britton, Jacquie D’Alessandro, Gemma Halliday, Susan Kearney, Marjorie Liu, Brenda Novak, Karen Rose, Gena Showalter and Wendy Corsi Staub, as well as reunite with two lovely ladies I already knew, Candice Hern and Sabrina Jeffries. It was a fun, cooperative, gracious group, and the sheer talent that permeated that bus was amazing. I was privileged to be in on a brainstorming session that resulted in a proposed anthology with three of the authors on the tour and another they invited via email during one of our stops. All these gifted ladies’ agents are very excited about the project unofficially known as Susan Andersen Presents.
Yes, Virginia. It really is all about me. (g)
So how ‘bout you? Have you got a story to share of an event or a special treatment that made you feel like a princess? I’d love to hear.
It got inflated in the first place on the Kmart Sizzling Summer Reads Author Tour. Believe me, around the Andersen household I don’t often hear the words, “Whatever you want. I’m here to take care of you.” But Levy, the wholesaler who gets the books we luv to read into the Walmarts, Kmarts and Targets, etc, hosted a 14 author bus tour and, boy, did they take care of us! Their team, po
wered by Pam Nelson, is one well-oiled machine. (That's Crystal, DeVar and Justine in the back row, Janet, Pam, Kathleen and Emily on the futon)Okay, sure, we had to get up before 4 a.m. --before 4 A.M.!!-- two days in a row and pretty much lived out of a suitcase. It was so worth it. We talked at libraries and sold at Kmarts, and the media coverage garnered for this tour was phenomenal. The first early call was for an appearance on an ABC Chicago morning show. It lasted all of about 7 minutes, but it was cleverly done and not at all condescending, and that is A Very Good Thing. We also had a reporter and the Assistant Advertising Director from Publishers Weekly traveling with us for part of the trip, so we may see some future coverage from that. Then there was the two page spread in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Detroit Free Press, plus a TV crew at one (or was it two?) of the signings and that's not even mentioning the food and omigawd, I think my head is starting to swell up again.
Um, ‘scuse me a second, will you—I've gotta take this call, it's the Soul Mate. He probably wants to know if there's anything I need. “Hey there. Queen Susie speaking. . .What?”
Oh. (whizzzz) “No, I haven't seen your blue shirt. Queens don't concern themselves with. . . What? Dinner? You want me to cook? But no one expected me to do that last week—they simply took me out to great restaurants." Sigh.
Still, more important than the food (and believe me, there is little I fin
d more imperative than my meals) was the opportunity to get to know my sister travlers on the Love Bus: Mary Balogh (the real queen), Allison Brennan, Pamela Britton, Jacquie D’Alessandro, Gemma Halliday, Susan Kearney, Marjorie Liu, Brenda Novak, Karen Rose, Gena Showalter and Wendy Corsi Staub, as well as reunite with two lovely ladies I already knew, Candice Hern and Sabrina Jeffries. It was a fun, cooperative, gracious group, and the sheer talent that permeated that bus was amazing. I was privileged to be in on a brainstorming session that resulted in a proposed anthology with three of the authors on the tour and another they invited via email during one of our stops. All these gifted ladies’ agents are very excited about the project unofficially known as Susan Andersen Presents.Yes, Virginia. It really is all about me. (g)
So how ‘bout you? Have you got a story to share of an event or a special treatment that made you feel like a princess? I’d love to hear.
posted at 11:28 PM
