Always Something There to Remind Me

"When I get down on the pages all I missed. It will shoot to the top of the best-sellers list."

Can You Make That Out To…?

I’ve written four books and I’m at work on my fifth (Ten Speed Press Five Timer’s Club blazer!), and one of the small perks of being an author these days is when someone asks you to sign their copy of one of your books. Usually this is expected when it’s a scheduled event, like a talk or tasting at a bookstore, bottle shop, bar, or restaurant, but from time to time it occurs “in the wild.”

A few weeks ago I was watching the Knicks game in the Lombardi Room at Long Island Bar and noticed a trio of guests seated behind me had a bottle of Averna on the bench next to them. When owner Toby Cecchini came to take their order I nodded to the bottle and said, “I didn’t know you had a bring your own amaro policy.” They explained they were going to a friend’s housewarming party and Toby said, “You know, that guy over there wrote the book on amaro.” Around a half-hour later one of the young fellows came over to my table with two fresh copies of my book Amaro, which he had run out to purchase at the Barnes & Noble up the block on Atlantic Avenue, and asked if I would sign one for him and one for his friend. Moments like that don’t happen often but when they do they make me appreciate being an author.

I like to sign books with a black Sharpie marker (regular size, not fine point) and due to a lifetime of poor penmanship stick with “BTP” for my actual signature (my former book editor Emily Timberlake still says it looks like “87P”) and when I personalize it or add a “Stay bitter!” or other sentiment it’s 95% illegible. I feel bad, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Whether it’s a birthday card or a love letter, the recipient of any missive I write out is typically required to decipher it like a secret code or give up and just glance at it and assume that the jumble of hieroglyphics conveys a nice sentiment. Once at a signing in Seattle a young Japanese couple waited on a long line for me to sign their books and then went back and waited on line again to then return to ask me to translate what I actually wrote.

And I always find it easier for the recipient to write out their name on a Post-It. I always like to talk to each person at an event and ask them questions or ask for a local bar recommendation and even when they tell me their name I’ll instantly forget it and have to ask again. Once when I was signing a book for an old acquaintance he asked me about an ex-girlfriend named Connie* (*not actual name) and as I told him we were no longer an item I absent-mindedly signed his book “To Connie…”

I’ve never been a fan of sitting at a little table with a stack of books waiting for people to stop by. There’s a sense of desperation to it and I always feel like a Costco employee peddling samples, but not as popular. Most of my events are often a presentation and a tasting or an in-conversation with a local personality followed by a cocktail party with featured drinks from the respective book. So I’m usually bouncing around the venue signing books, but it can be a bit dizzying and, like a bride at her wedding, rarely get to enjoy the terrific drinks and snacks making the rounds. An author friend of mine says I take too long and should just sign and not personalize each book, and that I should sit at one place instead of hopping around. He has a point about staying put, but I like to enjoy my own events as much as attendees.

I know, I know… “BTP Problems.”

But since Amaro I’ve adopted a tradition I picked up from an author at a reading at Elliott Bay Book Company years ago (and I can’t, for the life of me, remember who it was). But after waiting to have my book signed and ask a question, he then asked me to sign his copy of his own book sitting on the table next to him. I wish I had started doing this with my first book, Bitters, but have continued the tradition of the “yearbook copy” with Amaro, Distillery Cats, and Last Call. If I’m posted up at a table or a corner of the bar I keep it next to me (always with a taped-on Post-It with “BTP COPY” and ask people to sign my copy (who are often confused or startled by the request), or more often, send it out into the crowd like a boomerang that makes it back to me by the end of the night.

Beyond the element of audience engagement, these Sharpie-stained pages with notes from friends, strangers, fellow writers, bartenders, booksellers, and the occasional celebrity have become sentimental souvenirs in their own right.

Here’s a peek at some of the pages.