Ask a bunch of authors we publish – they’ll probably tell you that we are a pair of party poopers who don’t much rate book launches. And they do have a point. We’ve just got back from attending two in Glasgow – Larry Butler’s Butterfly Bones, and J. David Simons’ The Credit Draper. Two more different launches you’d struggle to find. But try as we might to be miserable at another night in a very cheap hotel where the walls were so thin you could the hear the guy two floors up shaving – well, goddam it, this was fun. Larry is a west-coast American long ago re-planted in Scotland, who read a lot of his poetry with a percussion accompaniment and then had a throat-singer do a version of one of his poems ‘from the throat’. Larry is the guy with ‘ching’ on his T-shirt, though being a poetry launch I don’t think the hidden part says ‘Cha-’.
The throat-singer is the guy with one leg shorter than the other and Gerry Loose is standing next to Larry – and we can thank him for finally getting Larry to put a full collection together for publication after many years of writing, performing and publishing poetry by other means – bravo!
The next night we were at the Sauchiehall Waterstones, courtesy of Frank Rooney – a fine bookseller who really cares about where the store stands for local authors and the reading community. David drew in an enormous crowd, 80+, augmented by a lot of genuine ‘members of the reading public’. Despite a big (I was convinced over-optimistic) order there was not a copy of Credit Draper left on the shelves ten minutes after David finished reading – and we barely escaped with our lives from the baying crowd demanding signed copies. David got his fiver for the foolish bet that I took – that he wouldn’t sell-out. Well, sorry David, and we do live and learn. Not that Waterstones need the publicity – but glad to show David signing here in front of the company logo. The Glasgow flag-ship store took a local debut and launched it good and proper.
Then a midnight dash back to base (one night listening to the guy shave was enough) and a bulging e-mail box and copies of The Sam Book just delivered. Plus a first-thing re-order for more Credit Drapers!
David
