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Tyler Oaks on the Move: Who's In Your Bookstore
I’ve spent a lot of time in bookstores lately. Since the November release of my mystery, Ruby Rest, I’ve had the opportunity to sign at over twenty events, mainly in bookstores throughout California and Maui. While I’d spent plenty of time in bookstores prior to becoming an author, I’d never taken the time to look down the history aisle to see who was next to me or strike up a conversation with someone in the travel section. Although sitting at a table with a fountain pen isn’t quite the same as perusing novels or flipping through garden design books, it has given me the opportunity to actually look around the bookstore, major chain or independent, and see who’s actually there. What a surprise at times!
Yes, I’ve met plenty of the obvious; mothers with little ones in the children’s section, students studying in the café, retired couples who come in to grab a book for an upcoming trip. In fact, if you sit in a leather club chair and watch, just about any stereotype imaginable can be found in the four walls of your local bookstore. Those contacts with the atypical, however, are what stand out in my mind as I reflect over the past months. There was the seemingly dazed Northern Californian man who started unfastening a poster of me with my book to take it until his wife scolded him. Around the holidays I somehow ended up dancing with the Santa from hell, and once in Central California, a woman screamed she hated murder when she saw I had written a mystery. Happy surprise in Southern California, I told a woman I would be driving back up to Napa after my last signing that afternoon. She left the bookstore and returned later with a new stainless steel thermos filled with organic coffee and a tuna and sprout sandwich for me from the restaurant next door.
I mustn’t neglect giving one warning, however. Attention literary ladies: you may be surprised to learn how many non-reading men walk through the door of your bookstore. I cannot tell you how many have confided to me that they don’t read at all, even while we’re surrounded by books. I do usually point out that we’re in a bookstore, meaning, what on earth are you doing in here? The usual reason is to visit the café, although I met a few artists in the Gaslamp in San Diego who came in to sketch but could still hold their own when it came to literature. Just a word of advice to woman who take their books seriously: The guy across the new-release table from you may just be waiting for his coffee.
While I still wish I could be paid for every time I’ve been mistaken for a Borders employee, an experience I had in one of their Northern California stores has kept me smiling for many months. After a man came up to me to discuss my book, he told me he never buys books. I politely pointed out that he was in a bookstore (my new favorite line.) His explanation was simple. He regularly visits bookstores to use his psychic powers to lead other people to the books they ought to be reading. If you come across him in the mystery section I hope he leads you to Ruby Rest.
