Post date: May 19, 2010 4:4:12 AM
Spend the week before overthinking it. Prepare a Powerpoint slideshow about your entire career. Write a lengthy outline cross-referencing the pdf of your book. Borrow a projector and let your twelve-year-old be your AV guy. Obsess on what to wear but don't choose an outfit. Rewrite your Powerpoint slideshow an hour before the event. Forget to bring something to pass out for free as an excuse to shake hands, make eye contact, and make people smile.
Be nervous. Arrive late. Have technical difficulties, lots of them. Switch to a different computer and stand up on stage fiddling with it for 15 minutes as people come in. Set up tons of cartooning materials for sale to an audience really interested in the craft of writing. Jump up with enthusiasm and start babbling. Lose your place in the outline. Skip ahead. Get stuck on one thing. Show elderly people slides of cartoons with tiny, blurry writing. Make some references to your repressed sexuality. Be thirsty. Forget to bring water. Have cotton-mouth.
Become breathless when the timekeeper taps on his watch and gives you five minutes. Be sad about everything you didn't get to say. Tell everyone they should just buy your book and everything you're trying to say will make much more sense. Shout at them to sign up for your mailing list.
When, instead of coming to your table to buy a book at the book signing part of the event, people come up and give you advice on how to give a presentation, don't frown and say "I know, I don't know what I'm doing pretending to be an author." don't think about taking a photo anyway. Don't walk around the room and pass your book flyer out to people and thank them for enduring it. Don't pass out for free the postcards you brought to sell, to salvage the day.
When no one thinks about taking a picture, feel like a failure. Forget that this is a supportive audience. Forget that it was just practice!