I take two boxes of books and head off to a book signing event. There’s a table set up for me. My mom and sister help me place posters, books on bookstands, magical creatures, and treats out with decorative flair.
The comic book and gaming crowd has begun to wake up and venture out into the world. Because of that, there are already people wandering the store’s aisles and settling down at the gaming tables positioned off to the right of where I am.
One of the brave, kind souls who stops to talk to me (and even more bravely and kindly buys my books) says, “I’ve never met an author in person before.”
For a moment, I wonder what “author”
means to him. Someone traditionally published? Does he know I self-published?
And if he found out, would he regret categorizing me as he did?
I notice these thoughts without paying them too much mind. They aren’t crippling or anxiety producing. They’re just there like thoughts so often are. Some might call them flashes of what’s termed as “imposter syndrome.” Other might analyze them as the lingering effects of having been brought up in a culture that encouraged extreme humility and self-deprecation. I might do both. Or neither.
The funny thing is, the character,
Hol, whose books I’m peddling, has similar thoughts over the definition of what
it is to be a wizard. In his world, a wizard is one who wears a tunic. And he
does. But because all the other wizards that came before him caught and tamed
the magic that made up their tunics and Hol didn’t, he struggles with the
question of whether or not he’s a real wizard.
But what does it mean to be a real wizard? What does it mean to be a real author?
Is it just a matter of having
access to magic? Of wearing a tunic?
Is it just a matter of which side of the table I’m on?
I recently went to a talk and book signing by the author Martha Wells. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of her book series The Murderbot Diaries. And it was, as Dr. Horrible says, a crazy random happenstance that I saw the listing for the event, it was in the city I was in, and I was free to go.
During the talk, Wells mentioned, with a kind of bemused astonishment—and I’m not going to remember her words exactly—that she was surprised by people’s reaction to her strange robot story.
But people’s reaction and
connection to a made-up world and a fictional character is a kind of (unpredictable)
magic of its own. As it’s also a kind of magic to be able to, somehow, some way,
create a character others find extremely relatable and, in this case, likeable.
I stumbled across the Murderbot Diaries during a rather dark period in my life. All Systems Red (book one in the series) was the first book in a long time that engaged me from the opening line and whose narrative voice made me laugh. As dramatic as this sounds, the story, the character, and the hope I found within that world saved me.
With a long line of others waiting behind me for their moment with her, in the brief moment I had with Wells as she signed a book for me, I told her that The Murderbot Diaries had helped me through a hard time and, in the process, reminded me why fiction (reading and writing it) is important and why Story matters.
As so often happens when I want to
be cool (or to be seen as cool), I got a little choked up.
It was awkward and weird. She might have made some acknowledging noise. She might have said something in response. (I mean, how does someone respond to that?) But I do not regret telling her.
What I really wanted to do was sit with her writer to writer and talk about life, story, process, themes, ideas, and characters. What I really wanted was to be seen by her as more than a fan, to have a conversation, to be a friend.
Instead, the gift I got from meeting Martha Wells was to hear what she had to say—words of wisdom, experience, doubt, astonishment—as she answered the interviewer’s and the audience’s questions, but, more than that, to see her as a human.
By seeing her as a human and an
author, I could see myself as a human and an author, too.
On that night, with her on one side of the table and me on the other, I thought about what it might be like to be sitting in that chair with a long line of people waiting to tell me weird, awkward things, be excited about my character or characters, or simply get a signature on the title page of a book.
Today, with the brave and kind
person asking me questions about myself and my books, I get to experience a
little of that for myself. For this time, for now, and in this moment, I am on
the other side of the table.
I am real.
