Here’s this week’s discussion on the Booking Through Thursday blogsite:

I said in August, when we talked about fan mail, that I planned on expanding that to live meetings when the time was right. Well, that time is now!

Have you ever met one of your favorite authors? Gotten their autograph?
How about an author you felt only so-so about, but got their autograph anyway? Like, say, at a book-signing a friend dragged you to?
How about stumbling across a book signing or reading and being so captivated, you bought the book?

A great question for me this week, given my almost twenty years in the book business, first as a bookseller and then as a publishers’ sales rep. I had the pleasure of meeting, and obtaining autographs from, oh-so-many authors over those years. Most were gracious, interesting, fun, engaging, and generous with their time. They were as eager to promote their books and find new readers as I was to tell them how much I enjoyed reading their work. I can honestly say there were only a very few in all that time who were either a pain in the butt or completely shattered any illusions I’d had of them. Only a very few, and I refuse to post their names here. But allow me to reminisce and tell you about some of the highlights…

As a rep, I usually didn’t have to escort the authors when they visited Calgary on their promotional tours. That job (sometimes extremely thankless) was left to the two freelance publicists, Marilyn Wood and Donna Gillmor, who were contracted by the publishers. But I did get to meet most of the touring authors, often lunched with them, or accompanied them, along with the publicists, to readings and signings at various bookstores, the library, and special events. Two authors I had the pleasure to escort became my good friends, and have remained so over the years. I’ve met their families and hear all the news whenever something happens.

It was Linda Granfield’s first trip out West; she was promoting Cowboy: A Kid’s Album. She asked me to drive her outside the city so she could see the Rockies from a bit closer than she’d been able to from her Calgary hotel room view. After she finished her obligations in town, we drove south on what was then called Highway 22X and down the Longview Road, my favourite drive through the foothills. She suddenly screamed out in that great Bostonian accent of hers, “Stop the car! Stop the car!” I pulled over immediately, thinking, Oh, no! Medical emergency! (It was always a great fear that an author would expire during one of these gruelling cross-Canada promotional tours.) Linda flung open the car door and leaped out, spread her arms wide, and exclaimed, “It’s beautiful! These mountains are beautiful!” She thanked me profusely on the way back into the city, as though I had been responsible for putting the mountains in place just for her to experience that day. In my copy of her book, she inscribed, “For Susan, You can be my buckaroo sidekick any day! Happy Trails!” And I’m happy to say I have remained just that to this day!

And Gail Bowen has also been a firm friend over the years since she published Deadly Appearances with Douglas & McIntyre, the first of her so-far ten-volume Joanne Kilbourn mystery series set in Regina and elsewhere in Saskatchewan. Right from the moment we met, Gail and I hit it off and we’ve remained in regular contact ever since. After I moved to the Caribbean, it’s become kind of a rigmarole to buy a hardcover copy of each new book (always from my friends at Pages On Kensington in Calgary), have her sign it when she’s there on tour (or get them to mail it to her), and then mail the book to me. She’s been a great support to me as I’ve developed my own writing, and is always quick to offer a sympathetic email-shoulder to cry on whenever things aren’t going well.

A third author became a friend through a chance meeting. Dennis & I were on Bequia for a vacation while we were both still working in Calgary (early 90s), staying at The Old Fort up on Mt. Pleasant. We had been the only guests in the small hotel until another couple arrived. The four of us dined, at separate tables, in the hotel restaurant that evening and got to talking, as people do while on holidays. They were from Montreal so we had being-Canadian in common. The man asked what it was that I did for a living that allowed me a month-long vacation at Christmas. I blurted out that I was a sales rep for Canadian publishers and started naming them, as I always did, beginning with Douglas & McIntyre. He said, “Why, that’s my publisher! I wrote one book that they published and now I’m writing another…” Oops! I said… But he promised not to tell anyone that I wasn’t back home dutifully selling books into stores right up until the day before Christmas, as I should have been doing… That was Don McKay, author of The Square Mile, The People’s Railway and a number of other non-fiction titles. He and his wife Barbara have remained friends with us over the years and we keep in touch, at least annually. Both stayed with us at different times when they visited Calgary, but they have never returned to Bequia. We’re hoping they will come back again some day.

But in thinking back over my career, and to specifically answer today’s question, there were two other author-book-signing-encounters that stand out in my mind as having been special.

Early on, in the late 70s, when I first started working at The Guild Gallery in Calgary, I discovered that the store could host virtually any author published by McClelland & Stewart because the sales rep, the wonderful Bertha Hanson (who deserves a post of her own some time) was open to promotional suggestions, and that store was almost the only game in town at the time, aside from the chains. So, I met Margaret Atwood, Hugh Maclennan, Morley Callahagn, Pierre Berton, Aritha van Herk, and so many more Canadian icons that were writing at the time. The most memorable was Mordecai Richler who was a very gracious man in person. Yes, I would even say he was humble, although that’s not exactly how he’s known from the public persona he preferred to convey. Richler, I discovered, generally liked people, but did not suffer fools. Bertha surreptitiously pulled a tour-requisite bottle of scotch out of her bag and asked me to find a glass. Then Richler politely requested some water, and accompanied me into the tiny staff washroom where we added a bit of tap water to the glass. (So I can honestly claim to have shared a washroom with Mordecai Richler…) A friend was in the store at the time and called out, “Would you like some ice for that, Mr Richler?” He dashed off to the little cafeteria across the way. The store didn’t get a crowd at all for the signing, unfortunately, so the book sales suffered. But the few of us there did get complete access to this man whose writing I considered to be the best in Canada at the time. I had brought my stack of books to be signed and lovingly took off the elastic band holding together my well-read high-school-then-university-paperback-copy of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Richler was visibly pleased to sign that one.

I also felt extremely fortunate to meet Richard Ford, who currently holds the honour of being My Favourite Living Author (a position previously held by Graham Greene and Brian Moore until their demise – it’s a lifetime honour). He was in Calgary promoting Independence Day and I managed to convince his sales rep that I just had to meet the man, I thought so highly of him. I gathered up the books I already owned and purchased the few that were missing. When we finally met, I thought I would melt (yes, his eyes really are that intense in person!) and I literally gushed about what a wonderful writer I thought him to be, and how good Independence Day was in particular. He shook my hand, and in that wonderful Southern accent, said, “Why, thank you. It’s so kind of you to say so,” staring me straight in the eyes the whole time. It was all I could do to push my stack of books across the counter for him to sign. In my copy of Independence Day, his inscription reads, “For Susan, with my gratitude and with the pleasure of meeting you. Richard.” Eeeek! Since then I have always tried to snaffle a signed copy of Richard’s books in harcover as soon as they’re published. Again, my pals at Pages On Kensington have always obliged.

It’s like opening a veritable floodgate to ask an old bookseller/rep to remember the “old days when…” There are so many more stories about authors, and publishers, that I could tell. If you’ve already read this far I congratulate you, but will bore you no more. The Calgary publicists always said they could write a book about some of the author-encounters they had, but would have to wait until most of those people were dead before writing the truth of what really happened on book tours. Oh, if the reading public only knew half of what goes on…