Come catch a reading of Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina at 7 pm on June 21 at JosephBeth Booksellers in Charlotte, NC or Friday at 7 pm at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, NC. Next week I head to North Carolina’s Triangle area, and I’ll be hitting South Carolina in July. Have suggestions on places I should go? Send them my way, and I’ll see if I can work them in as we make plans. If you make it out to a reading, definitely come say hello—I want to meet you! And if you are anywhere near a signing, please come by. Nothing is harder for someone who is not a natural salesperson than standing at the door of a bookstore and trying to talk focused shoppers into stopping long enough to hear about your book. Even if you aren’t near me and an Hijas book signing anytime soon, make me a promise right now that you will always stop and greet the author standing at the door of any bookstore that you darken. You don’t have to buy the book if it doesn’t grab you, but do stop and say hello, listen to the spiel, and wish him or her luck or whatever. I talked Girl Scouts, internal medicine, about every war from the Crusades until the current Iraq/Afghanistan conflict (Men love it when I tell them I used to be a high school history teacher), nut allergies, 6th grade reading lists, used bookstores, dog rescues, twin sisters, how one person can have three dads (and how much more common that is than you think), and Jodi Picoult with people who didn’t end up buying Hijas last week, but I think they had just as good a time talking about those thing as I did (and I know they loved Carly’s desserts!). So chat up the next author you see making the circuit. He or she will thank you for it!
