One Girl One Novel at The VARGA Gallery

Saturday 7/24 I had my fourth and final event of my east coast trip. I read from Chicken at the VARGA Gallery in Woodstock, NY where I lived for several years before moving to Los Angeles. This event was special to me for several reasons, including the host of the event  artist, visionary, gallery owner, and friend Christina Varga.

We used to share the building that houses the VARGA Gallery but now Christina has expended into the whole building. So it was pretty amazing to be reading in the gallery, part of which used to be my living room. I wrote a good portion of Chicken under that roof and it was amazing to see what Christina has done with the space since she expanded into the whole building. Here’s a pic of what used to be my living room where I wrote a lot of Chicken. It was in this room that I had a giant timeline on the wall and a big chart where I kept track of all the characters.

This event was also very special because I had some fans come all the way from Vermont just to hear me read and get a signed copy of Chicken. Chris Haas brought his lovely family of four to Woodstock, about a 150 miles from their home in Vermont. It was lovely meeting Chris, his wife Jasmine, their daughter Niobe, and their son Holden and I got to spend a lovely afternoon getting to know them at the VARGA Gallery. Here’s a pic of me and Niobe that I love.

It was particular poignant meeting Chris and his family because Chris sent me my first ever piece of fan mail. He friended me on facebook and sent me a message asking if he could start a facebook group for Sometimes That Happens With Chicken. Fan mail is always nice, but there’s something special about your first ever piece of fan mail. And the amazing part for me was that it was February 12^th, a mere six days after I launched my website. Chris Haas was one of my early signs of hope for my indie literature plan and he compared me to Salinger – gotta love that!

You can check out Chris Haas’ review of Chicken on my Review page or on the back of Chicken. He wrote such an amazing review it became one of the fan reviews on the back cover of the paperback. And you can join the facebook group Chris created where I keep everyone posted re: all things Sometimes That Happens With Chicken.

And on top of all the serendipity and fan connecting, this event got me the best publicity I’ve gotten to date. And if it weren’t for Christina and this event, I never would have sent that press release to Northeast Public Radio and gotten that interview on The Roundtable. Here’s a link to the achived WAMC interview where you can listen now.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain/article/231/0/1680177/The.Roundtable/Wanda.Shapiro

It was a huge success on top of three other successes and I would like to thank Christina Varga for putting it all together. Christina is the soul of Woodstock and if you haven’t checked out the VARGA Gallery you absolutely must the next time you’re in the Catskills. And thanks to the whole Haas family for their support. After four events in eight days I was absolutely exhausted, but Christina took one of her signature self-portaits of the two of us at the end of the night. I just love this woman and I love the VARGA Gallery!

Now that I’m done with my post event blog posts, I have a bunch of other follow up to do. I have a lot of fans and volunteers to thank and I look forward to reaching out to everyone who supported me on and leading up to my first book tour. I also have to get Chicken up on Kindle and in the iBookstore so all those ebook readers can get their hands on it. I had to put that off until after these events but now I’m ready to upload the files and start selling those Kindle and iPad downloads.

More on that coming soon…

ttyl