galleys

Galleys arrived today prompting a big dinner out at the Acme Restaurant in Carrboro. Some years ago I attended an author dinner at the Acme. We local booksellers had been invited, by the author's publisher, to dinner in order to meet said author and get to know him and get to like him. I'm usually very prompt, like I have to wait outside in my car til it's time to go into a place so I don't look to dweeby for being so early, but in this case I was way late. I was at home. It was midsummer. 

When I saw the time and realized my mistake, I ran into the garden and cut down all the sunflowers--gorgeous tall ones--to take to the author in a gigantic bouquet as an apology. He loved them. He said they reminded him of the sunflowers that grew alongside the reservation in Oklahoma, which was the subject of a lot of his work. 

Some months later I read in PW that he'd been found to be a fraud, that his whole memoir was one of those made-up kind of memoirs. I didn't care. I loved the fact that even if it wasn't true that he'd spent a bunch of time on a reservation, that he'd had the presence of mind to envision those sunflowers growing alongside the imaginary road. 

My galleys look pretty good.