Book Launch

I was invited to a launch party last night in town, for the debut novel of someone who used to be on the team with me when I wrote for TV Scoop. Although I'd never met the lady in question, she's the kind of person whose online persona makes it easy to think you've known them all your life. Someone with whom you feel an instant rapport that marks them out as "your kind of person."

Which made my quandary even worse. I wanted to go. Not only for the chance to finally meet her, and to avoid appearing rude, but also to offer a crumb of moral support to a fellow writer and maybe even swop rejection stories.

But I didn't want to go. I'm not good at doing small talk with a bunch of people I don’t know, and I can't stand the air-kissing "and what do YOU do?" luvvieness that the dark side of my imagination had already populated the room with before I even walked in. It was clear from the outset that the debutante authoress would be fully occupied with mingling, and wouldn't have a lot of time with anyone in particular, so I fully expected to be left propping up the bar, avoiding eye contact with all those strangers and clutching a pint protectively to my chest while trying to look unobtrusive and wondering how soon I could bail without looking frightfully impolite.

Regular readers may recall another aborted attempt at socialising with strangers when I attended the Alfred Bradley Bursary Awards ceremony at the Beeb last year (crikey, that's almost a year ago!). Well this event proved all too similar, except with marginally fewer luvvies. It did, however, have one redeeming feature which tipped the balance. We were expecting another ex-Scoop writer to be there, and I figured what the heck - at least there'll be one other person there I'll know, who isn't fully occupied with actually running the thing. So I went. He wasn't there. I chugged a pint of lime and soda and left. The end.

Except it's not quite the end, because Lady Authoress spotted me in the middle of my quick getaway and headed me off by the door. I honestly hadn't intended leaving without saying goodbye, but as the last of the lime and soda drained away she'd been engrossed in conversation and I didn't want to interrupt. So then I had chance to feel bad because SHE felt bad that she'd not been able to talk with me for very long. Great! I never could *quite* get the hang of new people. Maybe I should open a small shop in Royston Vasey.