Phi MIB Romer

This is what I do these days:



Replace the guns with peering at people's book spines and identifying alien life with scoping out potential future readers at every coffee shop/train station/bus stop and it comes down to the same thing.

As you know, writing has made me shameless. Shamefully shameless, mind you; I do feel genuinely bad about my newfound callousness. For at least two-four seconds. Over the last year, at weddings and funerals, in line for the bathroom and at the dentist's office, I've been brazenly self promoting.

But what happened today is a gray area; I'm not sure if I had ulterior motives or was being a nice human being for a change. You tell me.

On the big comfy couch at Barefoot Coffee this morning, I saw that the woman beside me was reading HUNGER GAMES, a book my sister has been recommending to me for years. Asking her about it led to a twenty minute conversation. It was delightful, she was actually incredibly helpful and gave me amazing ideas on how to market the book (it was her MBA training, she said, in the breaths between listing ideas).

All I said was that it's hard for me to read books these days, what with writing my own. And I had to tell her about my blog; she started talking about marketing yourself, etc. And yes, I happened to have my business card within arm's reach but that's because I happened to be using it as a bookmark today. I did not hand it to her till she asked.

Did I scope her out? Did I just want a quick break from my 450 page tome on publishing? I truly don't know.

I like to look at it as a win-win: she got access to my blog and I have a future contact in case I ever pursue that MBA story line.