More Than A Book Signing

I jump at group book-signings for many reasons, including learning about the writing world from editors, readers, publishers, and fellow word smiths.  My short story “Lucky the Chicken” appeared in Cat and Mouse Press’s 2021 anthology Beach Secrets, which led to a July 2022 signing at the Lewes, Delaware Public Library.  While signing more than a few books, I rubbed-elbows with several writers I knew from previous signings, met new ones, and learned a great deal.

Writer Phil Giunta, having released a string of short stories recently, described a collection he contributed to entitled Shell House featuring tales related to a legendary beach house once located along the Rehoboth Beach shoreline, a part of Rehoboth’s past torn-down long before I had become familiar with the area.  He shared experiences working with speculative fiction writer Weldon Burge and his company Smart Rhino Publications, and our conversation somehow led to the little-known niche-publishing of double-sided books, or tete-beche — books with two stories, one read front to back, and the other read from the back to the front after flipping over the book.  As our conversation continued, I learned Phil’s wife collected “Choose Your Own Adventures,” a genre I loved as a kid and one my teaching colleague and I happened to be rediscovering for our middle school teaching.  I was thrilled to learn these interactive multiple-path stories thrived.

I also caught-up with writer James Gallahan from Virginia whom I met years earlier when our stories were included in an anthology entitled Beach Pulp.  Several months prior to the Beach Secrets signing, Jim had sent me a horror story he had published with a Spanish translation.  The signing gave us an opportunity to talk in person about the challenges he faced choosing the appropriate Spanish dialect for his work and proofing a language he couldn’t read fluently.

Conversations with readers visiting the signing reminded me of the interest many have in the “stories behind the stories.”  Where did our stories come from?  What real-world experiences, if any, anchored our fictions?  These conversations inspired me to revisit my “Lucky The Chicken’s” writer bio, develop further the references I had made there, and expand the bio into the blog post “The Story Behind Lucky the Chicken.”  This, in turn, encouraged me to dust off some story-origin essays included in my own evolving anthology and begin another round of revisions.

I felt truly lucky “Lucky” became my third contribution to Cat and Mouse’s beach-themed anthology series, and I hoped what I had shared with my writing colleagues during the release party was at least equal to my take-aways.