One of the definite highlights of this or indeed any other tour I've had was appearing at Gosford Markets with Kate from All Good Bookstore Gosford and a couple of Forlish warriors in Uhtred and Osric - otherwise known as Mason and Hayden!
These brave blokes (it was in the high 20s) dressed in chainmail with metal helms, sword and shield and bashed each other senseless in order to draw attention to my attempts to chat to people and sell them books.
It was a lot of fun and when I get back to work and retrieve my BlackBerry USB cable, I'll be uploading video onto here as well as my Facebook page.
They really went the extra mile and you have to hand it to a couple of big blokes who like hitting each other with lumps of wood and metal.
The only drawback was the sun and the fact the Gosford Markets' promised marquee never turned up, leaving us all with a slight case of sunburn ...!
Still, we met loads of people, handed out stacks of bookmarks and glowing reviews of Bridge Of Swords and sold quite a few books as well.
I also helped Kate coin her slogan: `Available at all good bookstores, particularly this All Good Bookstore!"
Well, I never met a bit of wordplay I didn't like ...
Sunday was less sunny but also action-packed, as I popped into Dymocks Chatswood for the first time.
Bridge Of Swords copy editor Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words popped in to say hello and tweet as I attempted to sell to what was a bit of a sparse crowd that Sunday. It's always great having someone there, even if your conversation consists of about 20 little snapshots as you break off to speak to people walking past.
They may have been few in number but they sure packed a punch ... sold 38 books in a couple of hours, including a personal best of 10 to one person!
This wonderful bloke called Steve came in and bought a trilogy for himself, a Bridge Of Swords for himself, then came back and bought another trilogy for a friend, then came back another hour later and bought a third trilogy for another friend! Now that's a friend worth having!
It was a great afternoon, thankfully out of the sun and the stupid GPS even failed to get me lost. The damn thing couldn't find any satellites around Chatswood but, by the time I stopped swearing at it and it discovered where we were, I'd found my own way back to the Pacific Highway!
A big weekend indeed ... and I had a few days off before trying Melbourne ...!
My name is Duncan Lay and I'm the author of the Australian best-selling fantasy trilogies, The Dragon Sword Histories and the Empire Of Bones. I am now with Momentum Books (Pan Macmillan) and my new series, The Last Quarrel is out in eBook and print. Book 2, The Bloody Quarrel, is coming out in December 2015/Jan 2016 in eBook and will be in print later in 2016. Head over to my website, www.duncanlay.com for more!
Ok so so funny thing about that. Finished BOS as you know and decided to start the original trilogy again. I mentioned that there was something about the first books that drove me crazy - I remember now, the constant war between Martil and Barrett, it's doing my head in all over again ! So after finishing book 1 again I decided to sort out the bookshelf and was going to donate my original copies to the local book swap now that I purchased them again with autographs and dedications only to find that the original set were also signed !!!! Happy boy.
ReplyDeleteSteve, you are a legend!
ReplyDeleteYAY Finished the original Trilogy again ! I can see books 4,5 & 6 very clearly now Duncan. After you let that little tidbit slip at Chatswood I have been wracking my brain to work out where you would go with the second set of books from that time... got you figured out now tho. Maybe the title for book 4 should be "Barrett the Bad Guy" :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway stop reading my posts and get back to work..... I need your next book.
Cheers Steve. AKA Barry Bookman