This great picture is my very first book signing. (Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s first signing as well.) This is right after Writers of the Future Volume #1 came out. It is in front of a mall store in Moscow, Idaho.
Seated from left to right is Lori Anne White (who was in WotF#2), me, and Algis Budrys, the editor and author of many classics in science fiction. Standing is Nina Kiriki Hoffman, also in #1.
AJ was staying in my old bookstore on this trip. (I had sold the bookstore a year before, but AJ was also friends with the woman I sold it to.) I lived in an apartment about a block away from the store (I was single after the fire), Nina lived over the bookstore, and Lori lived a few blocks in the other direction. AJ would come into town, stay for a week, and his visits were always a blast, and a huge learning experience. AJ is one of the reasons I do these blogs and the workshops. I can’t pay him back since he has left us, but I can pay forward as he did.
I had not met Kris yet. And the first Writers of the Future workshop would not happen for another six months or so.
This was my first ever book signing and not one person besides a few friends bought a book. Not one. Great learning experience, watching people walk by in the mall and stare at the idiots sitting at the table. Sure gave me a quick learning of how real life works in publishing.
Also note, if you can see the books on the table, there were a few copies of The Clarion Awards edited by Damon Knight on the table, since that was my first published story along with a story from Nina and Lucius Shepard’s first published short story. Nina’s first story was in Asimov’s, her second Clarion Awards, her third WotF. My third, also out at the time, was in OUI Magazine, but I figured no point in having that there. (grin)
That appears to be a D. Dalton bookstore, if I am not mistaken.
As for the reality of book signings at mall stores, I remember in the 90′s walking past a Waldenbooks(?) and there was a well-dressed fellow sitting at a little round table out front, stacks of his book piled high around him. As customers entered and exited — it was a fairly decent day for mall traffic — not a soul paid any attention to the man. None whatsoever. He seemed on the brink of slashing his wrists. Must have been his first signing. I wish to heck I’d gotten a better look at the author’s name. I always wondered who that was, and whatever become of him. Hope he did well, actually.
A few questions about Mr. Budrys. I have a few rejections from him, from when he edited Tomorrow SF. They were encouraging rejections, and everything I’ve heard about him since tells me that he was deeply invested in helping new people. Dean, what kinds of things did Mr. Budrys do specifically that helped you when you were ‘brand new’ in that photo? How often did you see him and how many times did you get together for dinner or to just talk? When I talked to Lee Allred about Mr. Budrys Lee seemed quite sad that Budrys had passed, and spoke very highly of him. What do you think Budrys’ greatest piece of advice was?
I read an Algis Budrys book when I was ten, and as far as my memory serves, it was the first book I really read on my own, the first adult book. I stole it out of my dad’s closet because of the nifty cover and the blurb on the cover. “He suffered and was killed. And the next day he was reborn and ascended to the moon — and was seated on the right hand of death.” Rogue Moon, of course. 1960.
I met AJ at Clarion in 1982. Nina also was at the Clarion. That next spring he stopped by for a day in Moscow and told the writer’s group that he had been hired to edit a new writer contest and gave us the first sheet of instructions. First deadline was last day of June if I remember right, 1983. So in 1984 they announced who was going to be in the first book and the awards ceremony was in early 1985.
By the time Lori went to Clarion in 1983 and Nina and I had managed to get into the first book, AJ was a friend and regular visitor to my store in Moscow and would stay for three days to a week a couple times a year on his travels to conventions and between LA and Chicago. When he got the final approval to do the first workshop, he called me at midnight in a bar I was assistant manager of in Moscow because he knew I was leaving the next day for the Nebula Awards in San Francisco. He called me at my dad’s house in Arizona while I was on my way to the workshop in Taos to tell me to pick up two writers in Albuquerque to take with me to Taos. Those writers were Kris and Martha Soukup. So, how well did I know AJ during those years? I had hundreds and hundreds of conversations with him. I considered him not only a mentor, but a good friend, and he knew my schedule, where I worked, and where my dad lived.
AJ helped me so much with my writing, I couldn’t begin to tell you what was the best piece of advice. Once while staying with me in my store he offered to read a story I had just finished. He walked past my desk in the front room of the store, tossed the manuscript in front of me and said simply, “You wrote it backwards.”
He would not explain, just said figure it out.
Two years later, while working on another story, what he meant finally came to me. And, of course, he was right. I told him what I had figured out a while later at a dinner at a convention and he just smiled. He remembered the story exactly and we talked about it. He was stunning with structure of story. Just stunning.
But as Kris said, what AJ gave us more than anything else was a belief in ourselves. He let us believe we could do it, helped us get over the belief problems. Ironically, that was his biggest problem. He never really believed in his own writing. He could help his students get past their fears and help them with structure and story, but could not apply that to his own work. If he had, we as readers would have many, many more classics to read.
We demand equal time for Kris. Let’s have a “vintage” picture of her!
Randy, well, will do, if she will find an old one. I’ve got one of us with all the World Fantasy Award winners in 1989. I’ll put that up later, then the next chapter of Killing the Sacred Cows. But if you go to her official web site for her series running in Hitchcock’s Magazine, you’ll see a picture of her from 1984 at her Clarion.
Thank you for those details, Dean. I am amazed that Mr. Budrys committed himself so personally to writers he obviously felt were worthwhile. He must have had strong “radar” for quality people?
When I got my first rejection from Tomorrow SF I had just finished reading one of John Clute’s several SF encyclopedias, and there had been a section on Mr. Budrys — whom I had never heard of before reading Clute’s book. I remember at the time thinking, “Wow, a rejection from Algis Budrys; this somehow feels significant.”
I wish I’d not taken the wrong lessons from the rejections I was getting in ’97, and had submitted to WOTF sooner. Perhaps I’d have had a chance at winning before now, and thus would have had a chance to meet Mr. Budrys.
Based on what you wrote above, I understand now why writers like yourself and Lee feel so strongly about Algis. He left a legacy that is difficult to quanitfy.
Dean, I’d wager you’ve gifted many of us with a belief in ourselves that we might not have otherwise had. For me, it all goes back to those personalized notes on the SNW rejection letters. “Came close! — Dean.” Hand-written in red ink. The most encouraging words an editor had yet sent me at that time.
I looked at those little hand-scrawled notes more often than I care to admit, during the ‘silent’ years when I wasn’t writing much at all and was wondering if the whole writing dream wasn’t just a waste of time. My wife kept pointing to them and saying, “See, honey, you just need to apply yourself and keep trying! Dean says you almost made it!”
You — and Kris — are going to get a big whopper of a thank you at the WOTF ceremony on August 28th. Believe it.
Nice and I will even add interesting to see you back then and to read about who you knew and who helped you.
I’ll add my thanks to Brad’s. I also appreciate your comments, all of them. But I wonder how many of those who received your comments are still writing and if you were wrong about any.
Louis