Monday, June 18, 2012

Bookapalooza at Howard County (MD) Central Library

On 6/16/12, I was honored to be one of a distinguished group of authors to participate in the (first annual?) Bookapalooza in Maryland.

We gave away copies of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman at BEA, but this was the first event at which copies were sold. (It was also the first speaking engagement during which I pointed out the bronze scarab paperweight in the book...and then held up the real thing, formerly Bill Finger’s, of which I am now the lucky owner.)

High school students created one of those stick-your-face-through carnival attractions for every author; mine coolly combined my two superhero books:

One highlight was meeting Tom Angleberger (The Strange Case of Origami Yoda) in person after exchanging several tweets.

He’s as nice as they come, and an energetic presenter, too. Bonus: I also got to meet his lovely wife, and she’s working on a project that I think will go far. I tried to encourage Tom to get a copy of his wildly popular books to Star Wars people such as Mark Hamill and Frank Oz. A work in progress...

First time as an author my name has been on a T-shirt:


As part of my presentation, I did something I’d not done before: created and sketched a superhero with audience participation. Kids gave me suggestions for every section, from head to boot. The final step was to solicit three possible names and ask the group to vote for the winner. It was so fun and seemed to go over so well that I plan on incorporating it into future appearances.

Introducing…the Bat Tiger!



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