Tag Archives: independent bookstores

Angelic Bookstore Owners

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Bookstore owners are the sweetest, smartest people in the world. Trust me on this. ;]

Jack and I had a really busy month in July, with a sick foster cat (TEAM HAZEL FOR THE WIN) and a final push on finishing our basement so we could get moved in and turn upstairs into the SECOND STORY EATERY.  Jack was just back from leading his annual Scottish tour (next year now booking) and he was the wee bit under the weather. Yuppie stress in the grand scheme of the world, but it induced an aversion to doing anything besides sitting quietly on a Friday evening, staring at the wallpaper.

But Angelic Towe, owner of MariaJoseph Books in Wallach House, downtown Eureka, Missouri, had asked us ages ago to come do a book event in her bookstore. The store she started after reading my book. (Does this make me legally culpable?)

And poor Angelic, the week before we were to sojourn at her lakeside house for the event plus an extra day of swimming and sunning, was descended upon by family members under some surprise stress. En masse. Her bedrooms filled, her fridge emptied, and her Mom heart expanded.

We said, “Let’s just reschedule.” She took it bravely, but it slipped out that she’d “done some publicity.” So we said “OK, let’s get ‘er done.”

And when we arrived last night to the hotel she’d booked for us–gorgeous and with a SWIMMING POOL–in the midst of her own stress, she’d left us a chocolate bar and a gift card to a local restaurant. When we went to the first gig she’d arranged, we saw the “publicity”: elegant postcards in lovely color tones with antique script, touting the event at Angelic’s store.

Plus, her kids helped make cookies for today.

On the way home from Angelic’s, we will make a swift detour through Granite City, IL to BSR Used Books. Owner Bruce Campbell coined the phrase TEAM HAZEL FOR THE WIN while keeping up with the saga of our elderly, sick foster cat. He’s been one of her staunchest supporters in her new life in North Carolina (complete with her own Facebook page, as befits a celebricat). We look forward to meeting him.

And we will be stopping off in Indiana as well, but that’s a surprise we’ll keep for a later blog. Suffice it to say we’re meeting some (more) very cool people for a very fun reason.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it behooves us all to make friends with independent bookstore owners: sweet, cool, smart people. They care about cats, and they make cookies.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it is independent bookstore owners and school teachers who form the safety net enclosing the world, keeping it from flying apart.

Circles of Words

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Jack and I are getting used to people making lunch reservations, or sometimes just showing up at the bookstore, saying they read the book and had to see the place live. At first, we were a little shy. Believe it or not, that outgoing Scotsman can be tongue-tied around large clumps of people. And me, I’m an introvert.

But there’s something very nice about people who want to see your place because they think it sounds “charming” or “sweet” or even “too good to be true,” or who just want to “meet those cats, Beulah and Val-Kyttie.” (Beulah likes meeting people; Val-Kyttie does not.)

So Jack and I set down a “soup, salad, shortbread and tea supper or lunch” menu and started taking reservations that include chatting, singing, browsing, help with other town attractions: whatever the visitors-to-be want. Mostly people come in book club groups, but we also get girlfriend posses.

Friday past, three couples ate with us and did some browsing, then went on to the outdoor drama of Trail of the Lonesome Pine. I never did figure how Pendy, Jill and Vernelle (and I’m sorry if I’ve butchered the name or spelling!) fit together as a reading group since they were all from different states, but they were a lot of fun. Unfortunately they were the ones taking all the pictures on the day; my new iPhone doubles as a camera, but I can never find the thing when it’s needed.

Vernelle made me a bracelet of tiny paper beads with words on them: a circle of words celebrating people brought together by words. Isn’t it pretty?

word bracelet Words bring circles of different kinds of people together. Saturday, the phone rang and a lady from Oregon made a reservation to meet us in October, when she’d be driving by on her way to the Atlantic coast.

Oregon?!

On Sunday (when we aren’t open) I was straightening the porch when a car pulled up. It was Barbara–the lady who opened her own bookstore about 40 miles away, for those who’ve read Little Bookstore. Out with her mom and daughter for a drive, she just stopped to say hi. We chatted awhile, but as they were leaving another car pulled in.

“They open?” the woman called to Barbara, who turned to me, eyebrows raised.

“No, but come on in,” I shouted back, and the lady and her husband climbed the porch steps.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “My husband and I live in Cincinnati, and we were passing through for a family funeral, and when I saw how close we were gonna be,  I told him we had to just stop and see the place. I read your book by accident, and I just loved it. It was like you read my mind!”

Turns out she’d been trying to order a copy of the novel Big Stone Gap, but “all those things you said about small towns? Amen, sister!”

It’s fun, this people visiting thing. You just never know what’s gonna happen next.