When Carole Barrowman looks at you like you are crazy...
So, went to see Carole Barrowman at Boswell's Books (Used to be Schwartz's) on Downers Avenue in Milwaukee (pardon me while I giggle - ever since the movie Wayne's World came out I now always hear Alice Cooper saying Milwaukee in Indian-speak in mind. Anyways, back to our regularly scheduled re-hashing!) I went with knitchick1979 and chicago_girl_07 to pick up copies of I Am What I Am and to hear Carole talk.
I don't know how other book signings go, but this one and the other one we went to in Milwaukee when Anything Goes came out were nice events. Carole talked about an hour, telling stories, reading from the book and answering questions, along with getting interrupted by a family member. Last time it was Mum, Dad and daughter Clare, last night it was her husband Kevin.
We got to hear tales about what happened backstage of Family Fortunes, along with some backstage stories from La Cage. Found out that apparently Scott is not the right person to play games with, and his affinity for sledgehammers and to never mention a certain cat story if you ever meet the man. Found out Carole cannot do an English accent to save her life, if anything it suddenly comes out sounding German. One woman in the audience said that Carole should do stand-up.
Afterwards we lined up to get our books signed. Since my name is Carole B as well, we chuckled about that and she signed mine "To Carole with an 'E'." (She did that when she signed the last book as well!) I then gave her a small giftie of coffee, something I have been doing for all the writers I know this year. I even prefaced it by mumbling something about "I know how you guys feel but I didn't really pay anything for it since I work for Starbucks." (Cue me wanting to fall through the floor - yeah, that was brilliant!) I said, "Working for Starbucks has its advantages when you decide to go back to school, work in theatre and write." (Don't forget I had also said I work at Starbucks, another job.)
It was then that Carole stopped signing the book and looked up at me like I was insane. The woman who has John Barrowman for a brother, a man who needs an itinerary for his daily life, looked at me like my schedule was ridiculous. Okay, point proven, I do a lot.
Then it got mentioned that I just wrote a critique on one of her fiction pieces for my English class, and she was all, "is it the one I the website?" I told her how much I love that story and those characters and then she leaned in to me and said she was working on a NOVEL using those characters. I can't wait for that one. Then she mentioned how The Selkie (from Torchwood Magazine) started as a short story and you never know.
Very cool indeed and then we left the bookstore and went in search for food to quell the throbbing headache I got from laughing so hard. I had a fun time, now if next time I just don't do something stupid, that would be nice. Why was I a bigger dork around Carole Barrowman than I was around Steven Tyler or Tony Stewart, or sitting one-on-one with Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon? **Sigh**