The Desolate Nature of the Business

Initial indications are that distribution for The Horns of Ruin will be quite good, and there are already some reviews showing up. I'm hopeful. And of course, all this talk of book releases brings up talk of signings in the Akers' household. I'm resistant to it. Wife and I were talking about this, and I was struggling to express how badly signings sit in my head. They're one of those things that I recognize as important to the business, but I really, really hate doing them.

Put it this way: we all know how socially crippled I am. I just don't deal with people, or groups of people, terribly well. I do okay in formalized settings. Panels seem to go okay, because then I'm performing and I have a set topic and if it goes badly I can just pick a fight. Purely intellectual.

But signings? Realistically it's just sitting at a table with a pen and a stack of books. But really? It's sitting at a table for three hours with a pen and no one who walks by will make eye contact with you like you're some kind of eye-borne disease, and there's this stack of books, but not just books but *your* book that you bled into and sweated over and crafted like your life depended on it because let's be serious, your life does depend on it. And eventually they let you go and you can crawl back into your hole and hope no one ever, ever, ever asks you to make eye contact with a stranger ever again. Never.

So that's why I don't like signings. But I recognize that they're important.