Let us mourn the passing of the Litquake sticker on the sidebar. Yea and verily, it was a fine sticker, and will be missed–from there and also from my Events page. My poor Events page looks rather naked now, since it only displays one event for March 5 of next year. Stuff will fill in before then as the publication date approaches. I have an author thingy to go to this Friday evening, but didn’t put it up on this website because it’s some kind of industry trade show. I’m not sure what I will do there–I guess try to look marketable to book sellers?
The Litquake reading was pretty fun. Afterward I went to the super-secret invite-only party for industry people where I thoroughly demonstrated my embarrassing inability to mingle. I’m already daunted by making chit chat in the best of circumstances; add loud music and darkness and I’m completely done for. At my reading, I did give my contact information to a nice lady from the magazine Poetry Flash who wanted to interview me–which reminds me: I had my first interview ever with Wendy Werris from Publishers Weekly a couple of weeks ago. It was a lovely experience and I will look forward to her forthcoming article and review of my book. The interview should be out in a December issue; possibly the review also, though that’s not yet certain.
All of this means–hang onto your pants for this excitement–that in the not-too-distant future, there will be actual content to display on my Press page not involving photoshopped images of myself with Posh Spice. Sweet.
Elena Mauli Shapiro 
Mingling. Shudder. Small talk is so inane. Although I’ve found you can go a long way (in retail, customer relations anyway) with a big smile and focusing on the other person. Less said about oneself the better. Of course, I bet that won’t work when you’re promoting yourself.