23 Nov In the Holiday Spirit
Good Saturday morning! I’m taking a break from publicity/marketing this weekend, happily relaxing and recharging.
Last Saturday at Chapters (Indigo) Rideau was a chance to reconnect with the store manager Amanda – she’s been a few different Chapters stores over the years and always asked me in for signings. This kind of support is valued and so appreciated. Every store has its own vibe, and this new store location in the Rideau Centre was completely different from its previous location on Sussex Drive. It’s a great deal smaller, for one thing, with only one spot on the second floor to set up an author table. It’s therefore more difficult to stop patrons since they don’t need to pass by to get where they’re going. However, the staff was welcoming and friendly and I managed to sell a few books.
Tuesday saw in our first ‘Crime for Christmas’ book fair at the Barrhaven Legion, and it turned out to be a roaring success! There was a lineup at the door to get in and the estimate was that 150 people came through. We were eight authors, each with our own table, and everyone sold lots of books. It was such fun to spend time with the other authors and to chat with everyone who stopped by my table. We also provided baking and chocolates and the bar was open for business. We plan to make this an annual event. It was heart-warming how many people stopped by to say they’d read all my books and were only missing the latest.
This coming Saturday, November 30th, Don Butler and I will be sharing a table at the Hintonburg Artisan Christmas Craft Fair at the Hintonburg Community Centre , 1064 Wellington Street West. The hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. Another chance to get in some holiday shopping!
I won’t bore you with my writing week. I got in some work on my latest book, but spent more time on stuff I’d been putting off, like bookkeeping, editing, contracts, getting ISBNs and copyrighting. You don’t want to know. One fun thing I did was get going on Bluesky, the alternative to X (Twitter). You can follow me at: @brendachapman.bsky.social
(Doesn’t this napkin make you want to call the police?)
Check back in next week, and until then, enjoy the bleak end of November – lots of merriment on the horizon.