{"id":16,"date":"2010-06-02T19:16:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T19:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2010-06-03T16:03:20","modified_gmt":"2010-06-03T16:03:20","slug":"ready-to-sign-but-where-are-my-galleys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"Ready to sign but where are my Galley’s?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Paul from Simon & Shuster<\/p><\/div>\n

I would like to tell you all a little story about an Author (who would happen to be me ) and was invited to sign her Galley’s ( Which happened to be of Once Wicked Always Dead) at one of the largest book shows in the world\u00a0and had the worst misshap\u00a0or should I say nightmare\u00a0imaginable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0First I would like to take you back to the very beginning. It\u00a0all\u00a0started\u00a0last Wedesday\u00a0 when my\u00a0 husband\u00a0( who by the way travels everywhere with me, because not only is he such good company, but also\u00a0incredibly\u00a0good looking\u00a0and\u00a0is\u00a0one of my best\u00a0accessories.)\u00a0happily checked in at the Roosevelt in Mid Town, Manhattan. My Daughter who is a high Fashion Model\u00a0just happened to be looking\u00a0for a Condo and asked us to check out an area that she liked, which was\u00a0aproximatly\u00a015 min. walking distance from where we were staying. So\u00a0being the loving, caring and\u00a0fabulous parents that we are, we\u00a0dropped off our luggage and\u00a0happily started off on our\u00a0journey in 95 degree\u00a0temp\u00a0hand in hand. ( The hand and hand thing lasted about a half a block, due to the sweaty\u00a0palm thing. We\u00a0couldn’t keep our grasp.)\u00a0Anyway,\u00a0we were in great moods\u00a0and I was really\u00a0doing a good job\u00a0not allowing myself to complain to Kirk about\u00a0how the city and it’s\u00a0sidewalks smelled like a mixture of urine and spit due to the basking sun. ( I know\u00a0we live in Florida where it is ungodly hot, but at least the humid air smells like Jasmine, Orange Blossoms, and Magnolias.)\u00a0As we\u00a0were walking\u00a0I happened to spy\u00a0a woman of ethnic\u00a0descent walking towards us and thought\u00a0to myself how odd, she has her shirt raised over her bra and her bra is pulled down exposing her breast. Now mind you I know it’s\u00a0extremely hot out\u00a0but she is just happy as can be walking along, fully exposed and the streets are filled with people who are just trucking along like they don’t even see her. She happily passes us by without a care in the world\u00a0and I can’t help but crack up as I\u00a0look at\u00a0my husbands face.\u00a0It was classic, one of those times in your life that you will never forget. I nudged him\u00a0 and with a laugh I said<\/p>\n

“In New York you don’t even have to throw beads at them” ( I also\u00a0made a mental note\u00a0 to use this\u00a0incedient in\u00a0one of my books, and you guys wonder how I come up with these Characters.)<\/p>\n

After that things just went downhill, that night we scooted away to have a nice dinner at Angelo’s in little Italy. I had my usual Martini, up, dry, with olives (\u00a0which by the way\u00a0was extremely yummy.)\u00a0We finished our dinner and I had a glass of Chianti which was still half full. A lovely couple had sat down beside us\u00a0who we started chatting with. I soon found out that they were there for the\u00a0Book\u00a0Expo and was with Simon & Shuster. We were happily conversing\u00a0when it happened, understand that I am part Italian, from my mothers side and I can not help but talk with my hands. ( you know where this is going)\u00a0I\u00a0guess I must have really been into what I was saying\u00a0because the next thing I know\u00a0I’m \u00a0knocking over my glass of deep red wine\u00a0spilling it\u00a0all over the white linen tablecloth and splashing it upon the wall.\u00a0Since\u00a0I was completely\u00a0sober (ok maybe 90% sober)\u00a0I simply\u00a0flashed a smile,\u00a0shruged my shoulders and moped it up.\u00a0( This is one of the benefits of being a woman, we can use our womanly ways\u00a0when needed.)<\/p>\n

Let’s now jump ahead to the next morning, shall we? I awoke fresh and egar to head off to greet my fans. ( Well that is a little bit of a white lie, as\u00a0I had been up pretty much of the night\u00a0worried\u00a0that no one would\u00a0even show up at my booth\u00a0to get an autographed copy. I mean what if\u00a0I was to\u00a0sit there for a full hour and not one person came by.)\u00a0By this time my husband was a little nervous for me, but I was maintaining my composure and appeared\u00a0cool as a cucumber. I told him don’t worry talking to people, signing books, lectures anything to do with people is my cup of tea. Wanting to look like an appropriate\u00a0author ( whatever the heck that means) I\u00a0took\u00a0my time dressing and\u00a0extra care applying my makeup and doing my hair. With\u00a0my\u00a0saintly husband anxiously awaiting, I was finally ready\u00a0to make my great debut. We head downstairs to our awaiting car which was to take us to our great event. When it happened, we got the call,\u00a0or should I say Kirk got the call.\u00a0I could tell\u00a0by his face, and his words, it wasn’t good. He hung up the phone and he turns to me while trying to keep his composure\u00a0and says ”\u00a0You’re Galleys never arrived, you have nothing to sign.”<\/p>\n

“What do you mean, I have nothing to sign?”\u00a0I guess I had to repeat\u00a0his words hoping I misunderstood, or he was going to tell me he was joking. Not a chance, I had nothing to sign. I came all the way from Florida and all I had to sign was the eight Galley’s that my savior, who is my husband\u00a0brought with us just in case. Let me tell you we\u00a0walked into that place and I was not happy, but I didn’t have much time to think about\u00a0being angry as I had to go into damage control, and this we did. \u00a0We placed the eight books\u00a0that we brought on the table. My posters where hung of my Novel, and we placed one of the Galleys on the rack along with the other books. A half an hour before I was actually scheduled to start\u00a0people\u00a0began flooding in. I whole heartedly\u00a0spewed out my apologies, while promising to take their\u00a0name and address and send them\u00a0their autograph copy\u00a0as soon as\u00a0I hit my home. In\u00a0one hour I had well over\u00a0one hundred names and address\u00a0of people actually\u00a0wanting my Galley.\u00a0I had never met such wonderful people from all over the world as I did that day!\u00a0\u00a0The next day I flew home, my son had signed for the several cases of\u00a0Galleys which\u00a0Atlas Books had\u00a0Fed\u00a0Ex over night\u00a0from their warehouse. \u00a0I happily spent\u00a0my Memorial weekend signing each galley while thinking of each person that would receive it. ( Of course Atlas paid for all the shipping cost, which came to well over five hundred dollars. I had to charge them, just so they would remember this for next time and not make that mistake again.)<\/p>\n

So all in all, what could have been the worst tragedy for any author turned out to be a huge success. Lesson in life, like the old wise man said, ” When life\u00a0throws you lemons, make lemonade” and after sending out all those books I think a nice cold glass of Lemonade, smelling the Jasmine and sitting out by\u00a0our pool is exactly what I am going to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I would like to tell you all a little story about an Author (who would happen to be me ) and was invited to sign her Galley’s ( Which happened to be of Once Wicked Always Dead) at one of the largest book shows in the world\u00a0and had the worst misshap\u00a0or should I say nightmare\u00a0imaginable.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tmariebenchley.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}