I hit two more Barnes & Noble stores today to sign copies of Die and Stay Dead, one on the Upper East Side at 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, and the other clear across town on 82nd Street and Broadway (with a lovely walk through Central Park in between). The picture above is from the Broadway store, where they actually had the book displayed on the New in Fiction table upstairs instead of just on the Fiction & Literature shelf.
But something remarkable happened while I was there. The bookseller working in the Fiction section recognized me from when I worked at that same B&N back in 1999! He even remembered that I used to own my own bookstore, and that I liked science fiction and fantasy! I was flabbergasted. Not just that he remembered me so well, but also that he was still there after fifteen years considering B&N’s normal turnover rate. It was one of those incredible small-world moments, on par with the time someone in college recognized me because we used to carpool together to kindergarten. Hand to God, that one really happened!
I must just have one of those faces that never changes.
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