The Twin Cities Book Festival

[mmerriam]

Saturday, I ventured into downtown Minneapolis for the Twin Cites Book Festival, spending the morning and early afternoon celebrating the written word. I arrived just as the doors were opening, and was surprised to find the exhibit hall already quite packed.

I ran into half_double and leorathesane almost immediately, who had also just arrived. We spent a few minutes catching up, then dived in.

Folks, I knew the Twin Cities and Minnesota had a strong lit community, but you don't realize just how strong it is until you enter a exhibition hall with 100+ publishers of books, magazines, literary journals, and literary support organization. I meet a number of publishers and had a handful of local lit journals express interest in seeing my fiction.

Shortly after nearly completing the circuit of tables (I never managed to get to them all, and I never went upstairs to the children's pavilion, and I never made any programming items, sadly) I encountered cloudscudding, who I escorted over to the Sam's Dot Publishing table and introduced to Tyree, the publisher. wordswoman was already at the table when we arrived, and dmbaird and zarathud23 both showed up a moment later.

The rest of the day was spent browsing the tables and talking to folks, including Scott at the Tales of the Unanticipated table, where we lamented that the Book Festival, Arcana, and Conjecture were all happening on the same day.

I went back to the Sam's Dot Publishing table, where cloudscudding was helping Tyree sell books. I sat down as well. We were joined by wordswoman, the three of us giving Tyree a chance to wander around for a bit. It's always a good idea to help your publisher out when you can. joelarnold and Terry Faust came by the table as well, so we had several of the Northern Lights: 20 MinnSpec Tales authors available to sign copies. It was also good to see several folks I've meet at local conventions attending the festival (Carrie and Katie, I'm talking about you!)

As I was leaving the festival, I ran into Britt Aamodt, who pointed me to a possible venue to hold a release party for Northern Lights

I think next year I would like MinnSpec to have an information table and maybe a place for members to sell their work, as long as it is not completing with another publisher at the festival.

Filed under Moments When You Realize Your Life Has Gotten a Little Odd: I had separate occasions where people I did not know said something to the effect of "Oh! You're Michael Merriam. Great! Now I can put a face with the name." I'm still a little boggled by that. I also have not gotten use to having people I've never meet walk up to me holding my book and asking for my signature. It is a happy-making thing meeting someone who bought your work and is excited about it.

I signed a lot of books. I had no idea we would sell that many copies of Northern Lights: 20 MinnSpec Tales and The Horror at Cold Springs.

Tyree at Sam's Dot Publishing also told me that Horror at Cold Springs is about to go into its second printing. I told him I had the next novella in that setting almost ready, and he told me to send it on to him. Also, we talked about doing another MinnSpec anthology in 2012, since Northern Lights has sold so well.

That is all to report about the Twin Cites Book Festival, but I will probably post again tomorrow to talk about the rest of the weekend, which included seeing a favorite author read her work, going to a friend's deployment party, and running network cable through the ceiling with greykev at careswen's office.