Party Hardy!

By Deborah Sharp

I don't know what I was imagining might happen when I handed over my microphone to a drunk reveler on Fort Lauderdale Beach.

You know Fort Lauderdale, right? Famous for raucous Spring Breaks, wet T-shirt contests, and chug-a-lug nights at the beachfront Elbo Room. Literary readings? Not so much.

Okay, I was supposed to be reading from my latest ''Mama'' book, so not exactly literary ... but still. I'm not sure what my friendly local bookseller was thinking (or drinking). She brought a karaoke machine, like the kind kids at PJ parties play with, to the corner of A1A and Las Olas Boulevard and asked me to read from Mama Gets Hitched.

Harleys rumbled past. Drunks stumbled up. Bar babes peddled shots from bandoliers around their bikini-clad bodies. And, did I mention the wind was whipping off the Atlantic at gale force?

A group of women dressed for the nightclubs tottered past in high heels. "Oh, look how cute you are, trying to read out here!'' one girl said. "That's so pitiful.''

At least she bought a book, one of the very few I sold that night before the skies opened up and poured rain. And, no, I'm not above taking advantage of a pity purchase.

I thought I could talk the drunk guy into buying a book, too. But he got ugly when I wrestled back the mic after he started an impromptu, X-rated rap. Come to think of it, maybe that would have drawn an audience.

The whole experience got me thinking about the worst spots I've done signings. Here are my Top (Bottom?) Three:

1. Sitting on a hay bale in 100-degree heat right next to the cattle chute at a rodeo in Okeechobee, Fla. It was so hot, my give-away Hershey's kisses oozed out of their silver wrappers. They looked like miniature versions of the cow patties that spackled the ground behind me. I learned a lesson: Hard candy trumps chocolate in Florida's summer swelter.

2. Standing in front of a table at a chain bookstore, on launch day for the latest installment in Stephanie Meyer's saga. Fans of vampire romance elbowed past me to get to a humongous Twilight display to select their books, posters, coasters, calendars, T-shirts, coffee mugs ... whatever. Can you say, ''Humbling?''

3. And now, of course, the bar-packed, loud-music-blaring, motorcycle-revving, drunks-lurching ''Strip'' along Fort Lauderdale Beach. After my throat recovers from trying to holler out my prose, maybe next I'll try a NASCAR track or monster truck rally.

What's the worst place you can imagine for a book reading?

The Day was Bovine, Dahling

By Deborah Sharp

The audience at my reading was rapt. Only the occasional snort broke the spell. Maybe a moo or two. Welcome to the National Day of the American Cowboy, Okeechobee, Fla-style.

''MAMA'' Goes to the Rodeo.

The photo above, taken by my friend and fellow author Jan Day, proves the two of us were getting a bit punchy by day's end. It was so steamy hot, even in our shady location, sitting by a fan, that the giveaway Hershey's kisses I had left over from a signing the night before melted in their little bowl into a brown liquid goo. In fact, they looked a bit like the punctuation the cattle in the pen behind us squirted out at regular intervals. Still, what author wouldn't love a cowptive audience for a reading?

My funny Mace Bauer Mystery series is set in the cattle-ranching slice of Florida (bet you didn't know we had one, right? There's no ride at Disney.) And the latest, Mama Rides Shotgun, takes place on the Cracker Trail, an annual cross-state horseback ride that commemorates Florida's cattle traditions. Insanely, I rode the six-day, 120 mile ride in 2007 for research. My hindquarters haven't been the same since. So, the Agri-Civic Center and rodeo grounds in Okeechobee seemed like a pretty good spot for a signing. Besides, when you've set your book in a section of the state with more cows than people, any opportunity for a crowd is a good thing.

Okeechobee, center of the state, right on top of the namesake lake, shares nothing in common with the better-known, densely populated coastal regions. It's an hour-and-a-half's drive from the nearest ocean breeze. The accents are Southern. Churches out-number bars. Iced sweet tea is the beverage of choice, and there's not a Starbucks in sight. I love it. But there is a certain culture shock to being out there, especially when the signing I did the night before took place at Murder on the Beach bookstore, in swanky Delray Beach.

Country music sounded from the speakers. Spurs jingle-jangled. The Rodeo Queen wore a glittering tiara attached to her cowboy hat. The scent of swamp cabbage and smoky brisket filled the air. Right before the start of the Okeechobee Cattlemens Ranch Rodeo, heads bowed in prayer. ''Please keep us safe, and keep our horses safe,'' the announcer intoned. Amen.




Toto, we're not in Delray anymore.

I met some great folks, sold some books, experienced an incredible part of my native state that not too many people take the trouble to find. And I had an epiphany sitting there in the sweltering heat: A big part part of the writer's life is being able to roll with the contrasts (not to mention the odor of manure) while taking your show on the road. Reading to wine-sipping, oceanfront condo-dwellers one day, to rodeo livestock the next. It was a mooving moment, I can tell you that. Or maybe it was just a sugar high from all that sweet tea.

How about you, authors? What's the craziest contrast you've encountered? Reading at a rave one day; an old folks' home the next? Or, readers, from four-star hotel to pup tent during the space of one vacation? Do you roll with the contrasts?

Rescued by the Kinfolk

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.