BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Fans are wonderful. Really.

As I have said in the past, “anti-fans” , not so much. But, on this tour I have met some absolutely wonderful folks and even had the opportunity to visit with fans of the RGI series who are interesting, lovely, intelligent, funny, and an all around blast to hang with.

I have to say, however, that I was in for quite a surprise at our last stop on the tour, which was last night (5/31) at 13 Magickal Moons in Occoquan, VA. 13 Magickal Moons is a wonderful little store, nestled in an arts & antiques district near the waterfront. Owned and run by Samantha and Jen, a couple of lovely young ladies who go out of their way to make a visit to their store a memorable one. Workshops are always well attended and authors are treated like part of the family.

I first did 13 Moons last year and was accepted warmly by the patrons, even though they really had no idea who I was and many had not even heard of the Rowan Gant series. Many of them purchased books and quickly became fans and friends.

Now, since I know that many of them keep up with my travels I was actually prepared for the questions about the “Kicked Out Of Wendy’s” blog, and even when “Coldie” (another lovely lady) arrived with pink nail polish in hand. These are folks who joke around with you and make even a 12 hour workday seem like it goes by in half the time.

I just love these folks.

But, I have to say that I wasn’t expecting the twist we had yesterday. You see, Miranda showed up.

Okay, so she wasn’t actually Miranda. In reality she was a beautiful young lady named Suzanne (I do hope I spelled that correctly. My apologies to her if I didn’t)…at any rate, Suzanne is a fan of the RGI series, and an absolutely lovely gal. Last year we had an opportunity to visit at the store and she was great fun to talk with. This year was the same, however, Suzanne “got into character”. She arrived at 13 Magickal Moons decked out in her own version of Miranda’s dominatrix attire. This was a first for me. No fan has ever “dressed up” as one of my characters before, but let me tell you this young lady looked great.

After the signing and workshops we posed for a few playful pics, her playing up her Miranda attire and attitude while I played the part of her victim. (I should have known one of my characters would come back to bite me at some point!) At any rate, the folks who took the shots are supposed to send them to me and I will post them as soon as they arrive. (Note, we aren’t talking about any pornographic here, just some fun, joking around.)

Rumor has it that one of the fans who snapped a few pics last night will be putting them up on his myspace page, so they may be out there before I get my copies. So, if you happen across a picture of me laying on the floor with a gorgeous redhead in a black bustier, miniskirt and high heeled boots standing over me, it was not taken at the local BDSM club,

It was just a fan expressing herself.

BTW, Suzanne. Congrats! You win the “creative fan award” this go around! (GRIN) And thanks to you and everyone else at 13 Magickal Moons as well. Y’all truly capped off the tour with a bang!

More to come…

Murv

PS. Suzanne has promised an entirely new Miranda outfit for my next visit later this year. I must confess, I’m looking forward to it.

Wellllll, it seems the topic of Wendy’s struck a chord with many of you. I’ve received many comments and emails asking me to tell the story now instead of waiting until I come off the road.

We are still in Sanford, Maine, but right now Morrison is waxing prophetic about various things to a room full of folks (i.e. she’s giving a workshop and I’m not)…Sooooo, that means I actually have a little free time between signing books for folks. It’s probably the only free time I will have until we reach the end of the tour so I thought I’d drop in and run off at the mouth myself.

Big surprise, right? (Grin)

So, here’s the thing…I like hamburgers. Cheeseburgers, actually. Now, given a choice I will go for a really good restaurant style burger, but I don’t always have that opportunity. In a pinch, I’ll go for a fast food burger, and that includes Wendy’s. Now, of course, they have the odd notion (much like White Castle or Krystal’s) that hamburgers are square. This is something that I have problems wrapping my head around (yes, I know they stack and ship easier that way, but hamburger are round, cornbread are square where I come from…) Still, as fast food burgers go, Wendy’s makes an edible “sammich”. And, White Castles (i.e. belly bombers, sliders, whatever) are just horribly addictive. This is one of the reasons why I am inclined to believe there is something terribly evil about square hamburgers.

Anyhow, this book tour started in Nashville, TN…Burns, actually…And that was great. I’ll talk more about that leg of the trip when I do the flying pigs blog…Stop number two, however, was Indianapolis, IN. We started out on Monday last (5/21) with a fairly leisurely drive to Indiana from St. Louis. We hooked up with one of our favorite folks, Edain McCoy, who was gracious enough to open her home to us.

After the gig at Inner Path that evening, we were hungry. Now, something I’ve rambled about in the past is the fact that when authors get together they kibbitz and commiserate. Since we hadn’t seen Edain for some time, we decided we would all go back to her place, get in our “jammies”, order a pizza, and then visit for a few hours before grabbing some sleep.

This is where problem one occurs. Edain lives in a new subdivision that is outside Indianapolis proper, and no one was willing to deliver. Problem 1A is that there isn’t much around her area other than a CVS and a Wendy’s…Since the CVS was closed already (not to mention that we weren’t really all about nuking a frozen dinner), Wendy’s it was…

We all put our shoes back on (yeah, after being on your feet and such at a booksigning it is a great relief to do the patented “Die Hard” practice of kicking off your shoes and walking around making fists with your toes. Fortunately, Hans Gruber hasn’t shown up to chase me yet whenever I have done this…) So, anyway, we climb in the car and head for Wendy’s.

We reach the lovely oasis of square pressed beef patties and park. About the time we reach the door we discover a sign which says “Short Staff – Use Drive Thru – The Management”…Okay, no big deal. We get back in the car and put ourselves into the queue. When we finally reach the menu board a very unhappy sounding voice barks “Can I help you?”

Well, since I was driving I was charged with the duty of dolling out the orders, so I start the first of the three and the voice suddenly barks again, “You’re going to have to wait a minute.”

Okay. Obviously this person is harried here. No biggie, we wait.

And we wait…

And we wait.

Then we waited some more.

Finally, the still rather pissy voice comes back on and says, “Sorry for your wait, what would you like to order.” As an aside, I don’t actually believe she was sorry at all, but that might just be me…Anyway, I tell her, “I have a few orders here,” and then I give her the first. It happens to be Morrison’s and she wants something akin to a double burger with no pickles or ketchup and a side order of left handed wingnuts with flying monkeys. Okay, so I can’t remember her exact order at this point, but suffice it to say I couldn’t get across to Morrison that we weren’t at Burger King and that Wendy’s motto was NOT have it your way. But, Morrison never listens to me anyway, and to be honest that’s not actually an important point.

It was at this point the pissy voice barks back, “Are these going to be all on one order?!”

Okay…My bad. I had used the phrase “a few orders” so I can easily understand the confusion. I replied, “Yes, it’s all one order.”

This was problem two. Miss Piss on the other side of the intercom didn’t let me get even that short sentence completely out of my mouth before once again demanding to know if it was one order or if it was going to be several tickets. As soon as I could get a word in edgewise I said, “No hon, it’s all on one but I just have to get the individual orders from a few different folks in the car.”

Now…I am willing to admit that there might have been a bit of mild exasperation in my voice, but nothing angry or pissy. I even have witnesses to that effect. I am also willing to own the fact that I said “hon”. Maybe that was a problem too, but I am from the South and that is not a particularly abnormal thing to say. Of course, maybe in Indianapolis it is viewed as condescending, I don’t know. If it is, I can only apologize and say that it certainly wasn’t my intention. Either way, I am willing to own those two points and state that if they were the problem I am at fault.

However, I don’t think that was the problem. What I am inclined to believe is that someone didn’t feel like working. Anyhow, Miss Piss proceeds to begin talking over me again. This time, however, she shouts something on the order of, “There’s no reason for you to have an attitude and if you’re going to give me attitude you can just leave!”

Remember, she didn’t “say” this. She SHOUTED this.

We all blinked.

We blinked again.

Even with the highway nearby you could hear a pin drop.

Then we collectively picked up our jaws and reseated them on our faces.

Morrison tells everyone now, after the fact, that she was sitting there counting down because she knew we had about five seconds before the tires would squeal. I don’t doubt this. We know each other fairly well.

Well…About five seconds later, the tires squealed. Not because I was being hot headed, but just the nature of accelerating away across asphalt while turning the wheel. As we pulled from the parking lot, Miss Piss actually hung out of the drive through window and screamed very sarcastically, “Have a nice evening!”

Morrison has perpetuated this story all over Pennsylvania and New England ever since. Everywhere we go she now tells everyone that, “Sellars got her kicked out of a Wendy’s in Indianapolis.” Of course, she does then tell the story so that everyone knows she is just joking about the “kicked out” part.

I have to wonder if Dave Thomas is rolling over in his grave. Who knows…Maybe he will haunt his daughter and while she is surfing the web perhaps she will run across this blog and discover the fresh tarnish on her name.

Oh, and by the way, we did finally get something to eat…We had Taco Bell for dinner that evening, and it was very good. The people working there were even pleasant and polite.

I think I’ll probably visit Taco Bell again. Wendy’s, not so much.

I guess this just proves that square hamburgers really are evil. Something even tells me Miranda probably likes them a lot…

We are off to Long Island tomorrow for an evening book signing and workshop, so I doubt I’ll have much of a chance to post anything more until the end of the tour.

So….Till the next time…

Murv