"And you're an author, you say?"

This evening, if things work to plan (and if I feel properly inspired), I'm planning on attending a book launch. Two, in fact. The first, being held at 5:00 at one of the colleges here on campus, is out of sheer curiousity: I’ve seen the thing (it's a memoir) in various manuscript states, so it'll interesting to see it in between real book covers. (I never thought it would find a home with a "real" publisher, frankly. But of course happy it has.) I've never met the author either, although feel I know him all too well... The second is a launch party for the fall/winter titles of one of the more interesting small presses in the country, BookThug. I promised the publisher last week that I'd buy a book!

I'm not usually one for launches – not because I don't like to read (heaven forbid!) or enjoy the readings (although my attention span isn’t what it used to be), but it's because I struggle to find someone to drag with me to these events. If I’m lucky, I can find a familiar face among the crowds, but often I end up on my lonesome. And since I’m not the most outgoing of people (I'm not one to "work the room"), I usually just stand there, libation in hand, looking like a socially awkward dofus.

But I've been thinking lately how important it is for me to get out to more literary events. For one, I find they help provide inspiration for my own writing (meagre as that may be). Perhaps more importantly though, it could be useful and helpful for my work (ie., my full-time paying gig). I need to be in contact with more writers, particularly younger writers, to develop professional relationships which prove beneficial to both my workplace and to the writers themselves (think tax benefits!). I have a small stable of writers that I’m touch with, but they are primarily close friends who just happen to be writers. I need to cast the net out wider, and figure these launches and readings are the ideal means.

So at your next literary event, if you see a guy standing alone at the bar, nursing a drink, it might be me. Come over and say "hi."

Listening: Red House Painters’ Retrospective, Beastie Boys’ "Funky Boss" (… "get off my back")
Watching: HBO mini-series John Adams (partly in prep for a planned jaunt with the lovely A. to Washington, DC over the xmas break)
Reading: A poem (in translation) by Heinrich Heine:

You are just like a flower
So sweet and fair and pure,
A melancholy power
Lies in your sight's allure.

I feel that I should lay
My hands upon your hair,
And pray, God keep you always
So pure and sweet and fair.