Last night I had a reading in Central Park. No, not the one in Manhattan but the one in The Woodlands where I live. It was part of the Books on the Bayou project that got together 18 authors to read for five minutes in a town square. We started at 6 pm with stories geared toward a younger audience.
By the time my slot came along at 7:45, it was dark and the nearly full moon had risen over my left shoulder. The organizers hadn’t really planned for darkness, so I had to use a handheld penlight provided by my buddy Rick Dennis, president of the Woodlands Writers Guild. It was a bit of a juggling process, handling the microphone, the flashlight and my manuscript. I still haven’t gotten the hang of figuring out where to hold the pages so that I get maximum benefit from my bifocal lenses. The microphone was on a stand, but it was the sort that if you get more than an inch away from it, sound transmission falls to zero.
I read “Special Delivery,” which was published in Cemetery Dance a while back. Since I was the last reader, I could flex the bounds of my five-minute slot a little, but not much. I edited the story down a little to fit the timeframe, but the setting—the darkness, the moon, being outdoors—made for a fun reading. It may well have been my biggest audience for a public reading. I can’t estimate how many people were still there by the time I got up, but quite a few shoppers and strollers stopped off to listen to us during the evening.
The Market Street event coordinator wants to talk to me about doing something at Halloween. I think I’m becoming the scary guy in my community!
Tomorrow’s my day at Storytellers Unplugged. Be sure to check out my essay, “Lead Me Not Into Temptation,” which will go online sometime in the morning.
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