Last week I was invited to go to the
Public Library Association's national conference here in Portland and sign copies of Imaginary Jesus. The fine folks at Tyndale set it all up, and I had a really great time with Michael, who ran the Tyndale booth. Krista came, too, which was fun.
Here's a picture at the left of me signing a book. As you can see it requires a great amount of concentration to sign a book properly. Here's what I am saying to myself in my mind... "M..I..K..A..L..A..T..O..S.. is that right?"
In case you didn't know this, librarians are awesome. Most of them love books. One librarian told me about how she collects signed copies of books. I asked her what her best book is and she told me she has a signed first edition of Madeline L'Engle's
A Wrinkle in Time. (!) Only one librarian told me that she didn't want a copy of my book because she doesn't like books. I thought that was just sad. Or possibly sarcasm.
For this second picture, Krista told me to stop signing books so I could concentrate on smiling. That was easier! I'm sure after some more practice I will be able to smile and sign at the same time. At one point I saw this long line of people (I only ever had short lines) and I thought, this person must be an expert author, so I snuck to the front of the line to see who it was and discovered it was the free snacks table.
You can also see on the right the awesome poster that the Tyndale crew put together for the signing. It is in my car right now.
There were these other two librarians who, when I offered them each a copy of my book, said they would just take one and share it with each other. I knew then they were excellent librarians. Because libraries are all about sharing. Or at least lending.
Overall, this was a great time. I enjoyed getting to know Michael, and I met a lot of cool people while signing books. Two people wrote me that night that they were already done with the book and had liked it!
I know a lot of you would have liked to have been there for a free copy of Imaginary Jesus, and I wish you could have been there. The best I can do for you right now is to tell you that Christian Audio is practically
giving away the audio book right now for 98 cents. This is a one-time thing and the offer is good until April 1st at 10 a.m. PDT.
So, to all those librarians out there, thanks for everything you do, and I look forward to hearing from you!