Tag Archives: big stone gap, bookstores, Wendy Welch, Jack Beck, roadtrip, wildlife,

A Story within a Story within a Signature

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Wendy is on a tight writing deadline before holidays next week, so Jack takes up the keyboard and presents this guest blog.

We often have folk come in to ‘Tales of the Lonesome Pine’ bookstore carrying a copy of ‘The Little Bookstore’ and hoping to meet Wendy. They come from all over the country and even from other countries. Their personal tales frequently carry on a theme of the book, that the customers’ stories are as important as those in the books we sell.

One of the other conversations in Wendy’s book was about the fact that some products that are sold on from one owner to another only benefit the creator the first time they’re sold – houses, books etc. The result of the exchange was that there wasn’t much to be done about it, nor should there be. Another question was how long  ‘The Little Bookstore’ would circulate in used book stores.

To our great amusement we received a lovely card from a fan in New York a couple of months after the first publication, saying how much he’d enjoyed the book and that he’d bought it for $10 in a used book store. He enclosed a $10 bill just to prove that the author was wrong!

But today topped that. (Drum roll, please….)

Three couples had been through the store today looking for Wendy, so when I looked out the window and saw a woman holding a copy of the book and the husband taking pictures, I knew what they were about. Sure enough, Carol and Paul were on a trip back to Cary, NC and came the long way through Big Stone Gap to see the bookstore because they loved the book and follow Wendy’s blog.

However, their story had a twist. Carol loved Wendy’s book, which she’d paid $5.99 for in a used book store, already signed to someone called Laura. And she’d come to get Wendy to sign it again, having read the conversations about second hand books in Little Bookstore.

We had a lovely chat (they are also cat lovers) and then I signed her copy and so did Wendy – but check out the picture to see how she did it.

carol

May the circle be unbroken, Laura – wherever you are!

 

Unexpected Delights

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Jack’s guest post is a bit late this week –

It’s always a particular pleasure when something unexpected and enjoyable happens along, and such was our experience on Sunday evening.

A local friend who is a fine performer of the mountain music of this region messaged us last Thursday to ask if he could bring a group of folk to meet us. He explained that they included some Scots and they were interested in the migration of Scots and Scottish culture to this part of the US.

That’s about all we knew so we didn’t have much idea what to expect, how long they intended to stay or really what they wanted to know.

Even when the group of eight arrived we still weren’t clear what was expected of us and I don’t they did either. But as we went round the room and introduced ourselves it became clearer. They were a joint project involving actors from a New York company and members of the National Theatre of Scotland and were working on a piece to be performed at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.

Once the introductions were past and some fortifying drinks doled out the evening turned into a good old fashioned house ceilidh with everyone in turn contributing a story, joke or song as well as more insights to the piece they were working on.

Half way through it turned out that they hadn’t anything else planned for that night so food was hastily organized and more fortifying beverages produced; and on we continued with more excellent entertainment.

One of the Scots turned out to be a first class singer and guitarist with a wide ranging repertoire all the way from Billie Holliday to Jeannie Robertson and one of the New Yorkers, an African-American lass, was an equally exceptional singer and fiddle player.

To be honest this was the third late night in a row for us after a Friday night St Patrick’s Day dance and Saturday night dinner with friends, so we could have been forgiven for being somewhat ‘switched off’! However the company was such that all tiredness was completely forgotten.

Here’s a small taste of our unexpected enjoyment –

Davey Anderson with the Scottish ballad ‘The Forester’

As our old friend Duncan Williamson used to say on these occasions “Tell us a story or sing us a sang, show us yer bum or oot ye gang” – this time no bums were shown or needed to be!