No. 142 - Robin Black

A local coffee shop began a reading series in which they bring in authors for one-hour events. The event starts off with a local bookstore owner asking the author questions, then the author reads from their book, followed by the audience asking questions, and ends with a book signing.

Back in April the series started with author David Rhodes talking about his new novel, Driftless.

Today, my mom and I went to see Robin Black discuss her book, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. I knew ahead of time that the book was a collection of short stories. But I didn't know that the subject of the stories was dealing with loss, and especially how the characters were able to continue on after great tragedy in their lives.

I also did not know that it was her first novel.

When Robin signed my book, she crossed off her name on the title page and signed below it. I've had dozens of authors sign books over the years, but had never seen anyone do that. I asked her why she did it. She said that it represented striking the typed version of the name and replacing it with the signed version. I couldn't find any definitive reasoning on the net, but I did find some discussions that certain authors have been known to do this, such as W. Somerset Maugham.