I was thrown off my game, though, and felt embarrassed that someone had shown up to my reading just to say nasty things to me.
He wouldn’t let go but I finally dismissed him and I like to think, got the last laugh. I told him it was a satire, and that the tone of my column in the paper was meant to be obnoxious (we specialized in it). Someone who had obviously followed my columns in the New York Press asked a series of very rude questions, he heckled me and asked me how I felt about “glorifying the rich” in my writing. The reading went well, the crowd laughed, and I took many questions. I felt the same way on the day of my wedding, a sense in my bones that THIS was exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. Looking back, I remember feeling extraordinarily calm underneath all the surface jitters. I was impatient with making chit-chat and ready to go on.
I remember being very nervous and yet also very excited that this was my first public outing as a real published author. My family was in town, along with relatives who had traveled from Toronto, and many of my closest friends in New York came to celebrate. My first event was at the Barnes and Noble in the East Village, and as I was a regular contributor at a local paper (the New York Press, which back then had a fiery and pugnacious personality) I had a sizable crowd in attendance. So, while many people commented that I was such a “young author” I had been working for this for more than twenty years, since I was eight years old when I decided I wanted to grow up to be a writer. I had sold the book two years before, and had tried to be a published author since I had graduated from college seven years before. Of all the books I have written since, the character that comes closest to my sense of humor and personality was its heroine, Cat McAllister. I had written it as a PG Wodehouse satire, with a picaresque quality, about a broke New York City socialite. I was 29 years old when my first novel, Cat’s Meow came out. In honor of the publication of Poison I was asked to write about a “first time” and I thought I would share with you my first ever reading when my first novel came out. I look forward to reading her book Poison and to find out if her heroine does “save the kingdom with a pig.” 🙂 It is always particularly wrenching when a writer does not live to see his or her creation come to life. I did not know Bridget Zinn but was very sad to hear of her death.
0 kommentar(er)
