A funny thing happened at my sister Bev’s book club

Bev’s eight-year-old grandson Bryce interviewed me for his Summer Awesomeness youtube show before cocktail hour began.

It all started in Grand Haven, Michigan Tuesday evening. Poolside cocktails (Bev had rented their community clubhouse for the event), dinner inside afterwards, dessert, my short talk, a Q & A, a writing exercise, and then, big finish: I showed them how I manage to read excerpts of Writing Out Loud at book events without being able to see.

”It’s hard for me to read Braille and talk at the same time,” I confessed, wrestling an earpiece into my left ear and plugging into my digital recorder. “Before we left Chicago, my husband Mike recorded a part of the preface onto this little handheld contraption,” I said, explaining that once I turned it on I’d listen to Mike reading inside my ear and repeat what I hear. “Kind of like a TV broadcaster.” I was sailing through my reading when suddenly, the power went off. Which means, of course, that all The lights went out, too.

Not one of Bev’s polite friends interrupted my reading. I kept on, literally and figuratively in the dark. Cue the Twilight Zone music!

Turns out lights were out off all over the neighborhood – a power surge of some sort — but one book club member thought I’d orchestrated the whole thing. “I thought maybe you have them do that at all your presentations!” she laughed.

And you know what? From here on out, Maybe I will!