You can spot me in the first row near the left-hand size — the guy who was so underdressed.

On Saturday, September 23, I attend my first “Meet and Greet” at the Mysterious Galaxy book store in San Diego. I had heard about it at the LA Times Festival of Books in April. There, my wife, Joan, had introduced me to one of the bookstore owners.

The store itself is in a shopping mall and of medium size – larger than a mom-and-pop but smaller than a Barnes and Noble. It specialized in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Mystery. If you are a fan of one of these genres, Mysterious Galaxy is a place to go.

Twenty-one authors attended. I think that any author who asked was accepted. About half of us brought along family and friends. In addition there were approximately ten or so customers. In retrospect, it definitely was a “coals to Newcastle” selling opportunity.

One floor to ceiling bookcase was stocked with books from all of the participating authors and a there was a swag table near the entrance on which one could put bookmarks and book displays. It felt great to strut around wearing a badge indicating that I indeed was an author and to see evidence of what I had accomplished displayed.

The agenda had two alternating formats. One was for, well, meeting and greeting. Like at a cocktail party, everyone milled around and engaged in conversations. There was no real alternative to doing this. There were no, (well perhaps one or two) chairs available for sitting. Later I complained to female author about having to stand on my feet for three hours straight. She had no sympathy. All she said was “Try it sometime in four inch heels.”

Chatting with other authors was fun and easy. It was natural to spot one another and open with “So, what is you are writing?” or some such. The first half hour of meeting and greeting passed quickly.

Then after a half hour of this the mingling stopped. Half of the authors took turns going to the dais and giving a three minute talk hawing their book. The event manager had warned us that we were not to overrun. Everyone who did would be cut off in mid-sentence if necessary to keep everything on track.

Everyone but the speaker stood in an informal circle, listened to the talks, and then applauded each author when they finished. When the last one was done, we reverted to more meeting and greeting.

Later there was another break, and the remaining authors gave their spiels. Then we reverted back to yet more meeting and greeting. My wife came up to me and pointed out that perhaps my time might be better spent talking to potential customers rather than other authors, as fun as that might be.

So, I decided to give it a try, focusing on people without badges rather than those who had them. This turned out to be, for me at least, a much harder thing to do. A poor trapped onlooker could see someone approaching who was wearing a badge and depending on where they were standing might not have an avenue for escape. Like a deer with eyes caught in a searchlight, they awaited the onslaught.

And I did not really have a zinger opening remark to start the conversation. I decided to try “So, what kind of books do you like to read?” Unfortunately, there were very few targets. And of the ones I managed to talk to, not a single one said that they read fantasy.

In the end, I did end up selling two copies of Master of the Five Magics –based on what I said in my talk, I guess.

Certainly in terms of time, books bought to sell that eventually will be returned and 250 miles of gas coming and going to San Diego, this was not a profit making exercise.

But number of sales perhaps is not the way to look at things. It was an interesting and learning experience. I learned firsthand what a “meet and greet” such as this was actually like. I developed a minute and a half sales pitch that may come in handy at some later time. I enjoyed meeting and talking to other authors, especially Rusty Trimble who bombarded facebook with daily “breaking news” posts about each attending author He also hand crafted a memento for each of us – a domino adorned with the cover of our book. And it gave Joan and me, over a dinner afterwards, to catch up with family friends we had not seen in quite some time.