How the Worst Book Signing of My Life Turned into One of the Best Days of My Life

In writing and life, it all comes down to "the ripple effect of kindness"!

At one of my very first book events, I entered a large box bookstore (note: NOT an indie bookseller!) to find a grand total of three people waiting. A few seconds into my remarks, a woman sitting next to a little boy raised her hand and asked, “This isn’t Thomas the Train children’s hour?”

I wanted to scream, “Choo-choo!” to keep them there — I mean, the optics were already bad enough — but I shook my head and off mother and son went leaving me with one rather bewildered woman who asked if I’d still be reading. I walked away from the podium, turned a chair around to face her and said, “Of course.”

We talked for over an hour. She was there for a reason: My book had not only touched her, she said it had changed her life. She cried. I held her. I cried. She held me.

And that dreadful afternoon turned into one of the best book events of my life.

I learned from my late mother—a lifelong nurse, turned ICU nurse, turned hospice nurse, a woman who’d spent a majority of her life listening to, talking with and caring for the world one person at a time—that even with an audience of one, you can change someone’s life.

I learned from my Grandma Shipman (my pen name), a working poor Ozarks seamstress who never finished high school, a woman who was overlooked by society because she had “nothing to offer,” about the “ripple effect of kindness.”

“Good begets good in this world,” she told me. “Bad begets bad. Easy to be mean, but kindness is like a tide. You never know how far it will reach, but it will come back to you ten-fold, more than you ever imagined and when you need it most.”

When my first book was being published, I believed that my life as author would be straight out of Sex and the City.

Like Carrie Bradshaw, limos would be waiting to whisk me to events, champagne would be flowing, huge crowds would be waiting to buy my books which would become instant New York Times bestsellers.

I got a crowd of one. I paid for my own gas. Dinner was a bag of a Funyons and a Diet Coke from a convenience store.

Publishing is a hard business. Being an author is filled with rejection.

I work so hard — truly, I never take a break in my writing or work schedule — to ensure that I and my book are seen and heard.

The publisher works hard to ensure a book can be found by the masses.

But it all comes back to one person.

One author writing the story that calls to him or her.

One reader reading a book that calls to him or her.

This humbles me as I write.

Believe me, the perks are better the more successful you become: Book tours are covered, meals are paid for, your sales increase.

But I am eternally humbled and grateful at every event I do — be it a city bookstore or rural library, major speech or author panel — for each and every reader who shows up to hear me, see me, hug me, read me.

I tell them that I know they are busy, and they could be anywhere doing anything else except taking their precious personal time to see me, or spending their hard-earned money to buy my books.