Random Musings

I’m an introvert. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that. I’m awkward with people, though I really do give it my best go. I don’t always know what to say or how to respond and I often get it wrong.

Tangent:

This weekend is the Queer the Shelves Book Festival in Nottingham. It has taken the place of the annual Bold Strokes Books festival, so this LGBTQ book fest has now been going since 2009 in some form or another. That’s a LONG running event, and although it has had ups and downs, more attendees and less attendees, it has been a mostly constant thing for book lovers to attend.

I’m really, really proud of that. Queer the Shelves is my wife’s baby, and I’m just a vaguely helpful, often oblivious, passenger. Our new home, at the Nottingham Central Library, is gorgeous. And the most awesome thing about it?

We’ve sold out.

The room will be packed full of people, and for an LGBTQ book festival, that’s truly amazing and not something we ever take for granted.

Return tangent:

Starting today, we’ll be around all sorts of other authors/friends/colleagues. I’m utterly bound to make a tit of myself at some point, and probably often. After the event, I’ll go over conversation after conversation, with every single person I’ve come into contact with, and think of the stupid shit I said and the things I wish I’d said instead. I’ll probably have a tiny meltdown and stay in bed, in the dark, and decide not to speak to anyone ever again because I’m so incredibly inept.

The only weirdly positive thing about this is that I know I’ll be surrounded by people who will do exactly the same thing. People who feel out of place, out step, out of time. And that’s what makes the LGBTQ book people my people; so many of us are the outcasts, the weirdos, the introverts with a profound lack of social skills.

So. If you’re coming, please come over and we can say the wrong things to each other, we can laugh at inappropriate moments and make jokes no one laughs at. But at least we’ll be doing it together.

Oh, and we can enjoy the actual book part of it, too, once we manage to get out of our own heads.

See you there.