By Deborah Sharp
I'm offering a shout-out to my Chicago cousins today. It's not just
that I'm feeling guilty about all those winters they visited us in
Florida, when I laughed at their pale, Northern legs and begrudged
them the fresh squeezed orange juice and my mama's Key lime pie that,
rightfully, I believed, should have been reserved for my little
brother and me.
Nope, I owe them props for tossing me a cousinly life-preserver in the
stormy book-signing sea.
A whole slew of cousins -- firsts, seconds, thirds, even
cousins-in-law -- showed up to support me at the Borders bookstore in
LaGrange, Illinois, this week. I managed to draw a nice crowd in a
spot where I know no one, where I didn't even know LaGrange was one
word with a capital L and a capital G until I saw it on the ''Welcome
To . . .'' sign on the way into town.
And yet, there we were, taking over the place. The Sharps and Markles
and Cochranes and assorted offspring and significant others and
nearly-cousins that make up this patchwork North-South clan I call my
family. All is forgiven -- the times I gave up my bed, the emergency
room visits with third-degree burns in the middle of the night because
SOMEONE thought they knew more than the natives about the intensity
of Florida's sun, the incessant Yankee carping about Florida's creepy crawlies.
Forgiven, forgiven, and forgiven. There is no one more lonely than an author standing alone in a big bookstore. Without the cousins, their neighbors, and my friend and fellow writer, Chicagoan Julia Buckley, that solitary figure would have been me. I promised the good folks at the LaGrange Borders that I could draw a crowd. Book-sellers don't like to schedule signings unless they think they can sell some books. They're funny that way.
And because of the cousins, I made good on my promise. So bring on the third generation of Chicago kinfolk fleeing the cold this winter. I'll even squeeze the orange juice and make the Key lime pie. It's the least I can do.
So, how about you? Do you tap your family to buy your books? Or do you think that's tacky? Hey, they can always say No, right? Lucky for me, and for the sales figures on my second book, MAMA RIDES SHOTGUN, all my fantastic Chicago cousins said Yes.
