The Spirit Guide Bar Pizza Joint Book Signing Event went down May 18th. I'm still processing the good vibrations my family, friends, colleagues, and students brought to that funky pizza joint.
The photo above represents a mini Educational Management Group/Planet Think reunion: Diana Garcia, Yours Truly, Tom Hamblin, Clifton Batchelor, and Val Batchelor. We worked together to produce educational television programming some 15 years ago.
Wendy Fry Zeller was in attendance. I don't think I had seen Wendy since the 1970s. Like me, Wendy came to Arizona from Hawthorne, California a couple of decades ago. Like me, Wendy is a high school teacher in Chandler, Arizona. She recently became a teacher after a 21 year career as Phoenix police officer. Things were somewhat chaotic in that pizza joint, but we got the chance to talk for a few minutes. Wendy reminded me or we figured out, I don't remember which, that we lived less than a block from each other as kids. She remembered many of the characters described in "The Eight-Fingered Criminal's Son." Small world, huh? Pretty cool stuff.
A few students and former students dropped by, leaving me with a solid understanding that my 25 years in the teaching business has been a legitimate privilege.
A pizza joint is a great place to do a book signing, but maybe not so great for a reading. There was a little league team party going down 20 feet from where I attempted to do a short reading. Projecting with everything I had, I gave it my best to read louder than 15 jacked up nine year-olds. I don't know that anyone was actually able to follow my reading but it was pretty quirky, pretty funny, pretty much perfect for a reading of "The Spirit Guide Bar."
I will post more pictures soon...
Oh, and "The Eight-Fingered Criminal's Son" and "The Spirit Guide Bar" are available at amazon.com.
