Scenes from a Mall and a Parking Lot

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Scenes from a Mall and a Parking Lot

The authors with the staff of Bradley's Book Outlet. (Copyright 2016 Vicki Haid)
The authors with the staff of Bradley’s Book Outlet. (Copyright 2016 Vicki Haid)

In the song “Hello” (off Ice Cube’s album War and Peace Vol. 2) Dr. Dre raps, “We came a long way from not giving a fuck, selling tapes out of a trunk to moving this far up.”

The first book signing tour I ever did was for 4X4—a book I co-wrote with authors Geoff Cooper, Mike Oliveri, and Michael T. Huyck. It was published in hardcover and paperback, is long out of print, and goes for quite a bit of money on the secondary market these days. The 4X4 tour consisted of two bookstore appearances—Dark Delicacies in Burbank and Borderlands Books in San Francisco—as well as a local cable television appearance. The four of us flew to San Francisco, were joined by artist Gak and author Gene O’Neill, and then drove to the other signing in Los Angeles.

At a rest stop along the way, I managed to sell passerby copies of the book out of the back of our rental car.

That was in 2001. Continue Reading