A Legend That Is Most Sweet

The signing went better than expected on Saturday, though there were some moments I wasn't sure that it was going to come together at all.

It started out bad, I overslept and while I wasn't slated to come in and open I thought I'd be up and doing things long before 9:00AM. So I was playing ''catch up'' from the moment I hit the floor in the morning. I had to make several signs, things like ''Books must be purchased before they are signed" and "Arms and Armor donated by Baltimore Knife and Sword Company"

Yes, I was blessed to have real blades at the signing, on loan from a good friend whose sons run BK&S, hence the link I have up now. Matt and Kerry are two very talented metalsmiths whose work is being requested all over the world by swordmasters and LARP members alike. The steel used in the swords you see for sale on most sites is so thin and so brittle that the blades brake within weeks of use. They are great for decoration but not for demonstration. I wish I could say that I was friends with Matt and Kerry and was within driving distance to their lovely stash of weapons, but alas, I'm not.

:-D I just happen to know their Dad who gets the most awesome birthday-father's day-christmas gifts ever from them.

The gladius that I had up on the wall (yes, yes I took pictures and I will post them this week) runs $1500.00US and Matt's only made the one so far, the daggers I think his father said are somewhere between $500.00 and $800.00 US. But when you hold them in your hand, the balance, the way that they just snug into your hand and become an extension of your arm make you never want to put them down. I have fallen in love with the gladius and I don't want to give it back! I will, of course, but not without tears and separation pangs.

If you go and visit their site, be sure to check out the ''product'' page, Matt's updating the whole site slowly but surely and that's the most recent part to my knowledge.

I also wanted to print out an email sign up list for Bryan Saturday morning so he could keep in touch with his fans, and that took time and then I had to find the captain's inkwell, find where I'd stashed the slips of paper we were using to differentiate books brought in from books purchased at the store, and get all that lovely paper and the teal/water calico into the van. So instead of eating breakfast and doing all my normal morning things like a normal person I skipped the meal, rushed about madly, and barely made it to the store at 11:00AM, one hour before the signing started. Austin and I had talked the night before when I was taking the product down and putting the display together for the author that the sword and daggers looked utterly fantastic on the wall but seeing as there were little customers in the store and he had to do other things and we didn't want them getting stolen or manhandled the best thing to do was to take them down, lock them up tight, and put them back out the next morning. Saturday morning, however, was so busy at the store that we revised that plan and decided not to put them out till the start of the signing, because then Bryan would be there and he'd be sitting in front of them and could make sure that the curious fans were kept a safe distance away, holding to the ''look but don't touch'' rule.

Mom had volunteered to come along and take pictures of the event for me because I'm usually behind the counter at customer service ringing and can't get out and do much else for a while, so she came along and helped me place the blue cloth and we tinkered with some of the props for a bit and then I remembered that I was suppose to get bagels as my part of the food for the signing. So, Mom to the rescue again, she whisked me up to the local Panera and we got 18 bagels and two spreads (one sweet one savory) and then got back to the store just as Bryan pulled up in his car. *Whew* I didn't know that you could pack so much into one hour.

So I met Bryan in person, and he was as delightful as he'd come across in his e-mails. I really liked him right away and relaxed because he was relaxed. He loved the set up and settled right in, and Austin brought out the gladius and the daggers and we put them up on the wall with the books along with the poster that Bryan had brought of the book cover art. The first sale happened about ten minutes after and Bryan was just as kind and as relaxed with that customer as he had been with me, and that was to set the tone for the whole event. Everyone that came up to him, he treated as if they were the only one there and as if he had all the time in the world to spend just talking with them.

He had some family show up too and that was fantastic as well, he had his sister and her fiance' and they stayed quite a bit and were just delights, and his wife stopped in and was just as nice and relaxed as he was and grateful too to see his work set off with the props I brought together. Other fans showed up as the day went on and he confided to me that he'd told people when they purchased his book to come to the store and he'd sign it that day for them, which was a stroke of brilliance. His sister too took some time to hand out these really nifty cards the publisher had sent along to promote his book. In the down time between as he put it ''the mad rush and press of the crowd" (we weren't really that busy all the time which made that funny) he talked with me about writing and his faith and Christ and his time studying with Francis Schaefer and his next book and I had a blast, a real blast, and he wrote some very nice things in my copy of his book. We sold 27 copies of Legend of the FireFish total, and the owner, my lovely boss, had him sign 6 more for the stores.

The event was so well done, she said, that we could most definately have him back in September when his next book will be available. *Yay* that's what I wanted!