So I made a speech last night at NKU, then I read from Coraline for an hour, and then I did a 45 minute Q & A, read Crazy Hair and followed it with a two hour signing. Someone in the signing line brought bottles of berry flavour Clearly Canadian and some sweets as a present, which came in very useful as it got later and later and I faded more and my handwriting got wonkier and wonkier.
It was fun. The only thing I find frustrating is that reading Coraline in front of live audiences, at Aggiecon on Sunday and then last night at NKU, I'm really starting to find what works in the text and where the beats and the voices are, in a way you only can while reading aloud to a room filled with people who can cough and shift and laugh and hush -- knowledge I really wish I'd had when I was recording the audio book a couple of weeks ago, with only a microphone, a glass wall, and an occasional disembodied voice asking me to take that again as a truck went past. Ah well. (Insert shrug here.) It just means it'll be better live than it was on the audio book.