Business Can Be A Pleasure

       Nice every now and again to combine business and pleasure. This past weekend, November 19-21, I was at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento, a thoroughly enjoyable three days. I hadn't been in the building ten minutes when my friend Darwyn approached me with a chocolate bar in hand. When an event starts out like that, you know it's gonna be good.
       To dispose of the business first, the Ragtime Store sold a good number of signed copies of my three ragtime-based mysteries, some people buying all three of the trilogy. Nice.
      As to the music - I can say with truth that I've never attended a festival with better ragtime, as rendered by pianists, orchestras and small groups, string virtuosos, rhythm accompanists, and singers. To list all the terrific performers would take a whole page, but just to mention a few: the Ivory and Gold trio (pianist Jeff Barnhart, flutist Anne Barnhart, and drummer Danny Coots) were back for the first time in ten years, and infused the entire festival with their superb musicianship and great good humor. And pianist Larisa Migachyov's performance of Joseph Lamb's "Bohemia" rag was breathtakingly beautiful.
      The weather was wonderful, temperatures in the seventies and eighties, but of course there's always payback. I flew home in the midst of the big Seattle snowstorm; fortunately, son-in-law Peter Greyy, a Wisconsin native, was able to pick me up and get me home. Always better lucky than good.

Now I'm A Performer

One of the interesting things about research and promotion is that
you keep finding yourself in novel situations. Musically challenged
as I am, I never dreamed I'd be up on a stage as part of a music
show. True, I've presented research seminars at the Scott Joplin and
West Coast Ragtime Festivals, a step in the general direction, but
no, not really a performance.
But as of last weekend, I'm officially a performer. Here's a
picture of me with Donald Sosin, a terrific ragtime pianist who also
does a spectacular job of providing musical accompaniment for silent
films. Donald came all the way from Connecticut to do this
show. We're at Kenyon Hall in West Seattle, providing an evening of
Ragtime in Music and Words. Don played the music, I spoke the words
- the history of and stories about ragtime pioneers such as Scott
Joplin, John Stark, Irving Berlin, and Brun Campbell (The Ragtime Kid).
Putting on a performance feels very different from presenting a
seminar or a bookstore event. It's actually fun, a real kick. Who'd
ever have believed it? Not I. But now, I'm looking forward to doing
more shows. Stay tuned.

On the Road Again

I see it's National Novel Writing Month - http://www.nanowrimo.org/ - but for me, it's Novel Promoting Month. For the next couple of weeks, I'll be going to independent bookshops from Scottsdale's The Poisoned Pen, through California, then winding up at the West Coast Ragtime Festival in Sacramento. Follow me via the link at the right to my schedule.
I'll keep you posted from time to time via my trusty Sidekick.