Aunt Agatha's

I had a fantastic time at the author event at Aunt Agatha's, in the lovely university town of Ann Arbor.

Now I pause at this point. If you're my literary agent, would you please avert your eyes. I wouldn't want you to become sad, or use me for chum.

...

Okay, now that The Shark's not reading, I'll admit I probably did everything at the Ann Arbor event that an author's not supposed to do. Which is no surprise, because until Pericles Commission released, I'd never seen one. Yes, the first author event I ever attended was my own. I'm what's called a pantster when it comes to writing and, it seems at events too.

One of the great mysteries of the universe is this: what is an author supposed to talk about at an author event?

In my case, I have a tendency to talk about the innards of my book. On the face of it, this is reasonable, but received wisdom is that readers turn up to book events to learn about the author and his personality. Alas, my personality runs to the uber-geek, so with the best will in the world, I'm usually sucked into talking about the fun history.

To my joy, at Aunt Agatha's I was in a room of like-minded people. I'm pretty sure we spent 3 solid hours talking about ancient Greek history...yes, Janet is wincing...that's probably her head your hear thumping the wall ...but I cannot tell a lie.

It went three hours because these kind people in the picture took me to dinner before the talk, and the moment I sat down, someone asked a history question about the book. It was all downhill from there...when we removed to the store, we kept going, and I'm sure I'd still be there if the lovely proprietess Robin Agnew, standing at the back, hadn't politely suggested it was well past 9pm. (Another blunder on my part; authors are supposed to watch the time.)

So all this proves is I'm an amateur at the book tour biz. That's okay; I'll get more normal with practice.

But the important thing is I had fun, and I know the Ann Arboreans had fun because they hung around and chatted and bought books. (I just made up Ann Arboreans, but it looks right, doesn't it?)

One slightly embarrassing moment: I discovered, to my surprise, that I don't know my own book! I wanted to quote a piece of dialog, but do you think I could find it amongst all those pages? It was up to the kind gentleman on the left in the picture, to save me by flipping through while I chatted away. There was no chance of spoilers: he'd already read the book! He therefore wins the prize as the first Real Person I've ever met who's read my book before they met me.

I had so much fun at that talk, I can't wait to go back and see the nice people at Aunt Agatha's again. (A desire assisted by the fact that Ann Arbor is a gorgeous place with good coffee.)

So I'd be interested to know, if you're at an author event, what do you want to hear? What is the perfect author talk?