Hello once again from the big, black chair. I only say that because my chair is black and larger than others in the office. I know a lot of you are out of town doing all sorts of good time things on beaches and around pools so I will not bother you too much about things going on in the stores. I wanted to let you all know about a few other things I do aside from arrange for authors to come to the stores and speak.

By now, you should all be aware of our in-store event program, but did you know that Olsson's also provides books to off site events? What the heck and I talking about? Please allow me to tell you more about them.

To begin with, authors write books. This is something we know about. We have tried to stop them but then we would have to call them something else or they would all resort to blogging and bookstores would have to go out of business.

Some authors have friends or family members who are very supportive of them or excited that said author has finally gotten a paycheck from writing in a bathrobe day in and day out. Now they might move out of their parents basement or off their friend's sofa. These friends organize book parties for the author, involving catering and free booze. If those friends are really thinking ahead, then they contact the publisher so books can be sold at the event. This does two things: First, it makes the party look like more than 20 people in a living room drinking Heineken and eating buffalo wings. Second, it makes the book available for the guests and secures a small amount of income for the author thus, keeping them off the sofa for a period of time. (I think authors get money from book sales 15 to 20 years after the publication date) The publisher then contacts me and I come to the rescue with a bookseller.

The bookseller sits at a small table (provided by the host, we hope) and sells books to the excited masses. In the best case, people buy the books and have the author sign them and write something catchy inside like, "Happy 42nd, Martha!" In the worst case, the host gets confused about the concept of a bookseller and gives the books away to the guests. -- A side note on this. If you give away something that isn't yours and people take it, this is like stealing. I can't give everyone reading this blog a new Toyota, because I don't own them all. If I encourage you all to go pick up your new car at the dealer, you will all get arrested -- The best case happens more often that the worst case and all the guest get to go home slightly buzzed on free Heineken and chicken wings with one copy of Joe Author's book for themselves and one for Martha clutched to their chests.

This is a very roundabout way of telling you all that we also do events out of the store. July has been a very busy month for off-site events. We have done about 15 this month which is only 4 less than in-store events. If you are a person who has an author friend and want to have a party for them, by following these simple steps you might be able to get your author off your sofa.

Step one. Plan a party.

Step two. Call the author's publisher and have them call me. Don't call me directly, you don't have my phone number.

Step three. Throw the party and encourage all the guests to buy the book so the author will stop sleeping on your sofa.

Simple, isn't it? I thought so.

Okay, that has to be it for me. I am at the end of another long day and the only thing I have eaten today was cake and coffee. If you are having an event and want to have books available, please do contact me.

If you are my intern who has yet to show up and take some things off my plate, where the heck are you?

This may be the shortest blog I have done to date. My week has gotten away from me and I still have way too many things to do. I have to go to a party tonight for Kristen Gore that is being thrown by her parents. Before you say, "Wow, how rough is it to have to go to a party with the Gore family?" I will tell you in advance, that I will only be there to sell 300 books in a very short time. Pre-sales are not an option and the only equipment I will have with me is a pen and a knuckle-buster credit card machine. I will have to get out of the situation using only my wits and the tools I can fashion from cocktail napkins and those little plastic swords. I am more like Bear Grylls than a social dignitary. If Bear Screws up, he only faces death, I have to face an angry event manager and maybe Al Gore. Or worse, Tipper.

A real thing I wanted to tell you about is a cool event coming up in Dupont Circle next week. I travel. I travel a fair amount, I just got back form Canada where I had a grand time doing nothing. Some of you travel, and I am certain you send a postcard to someone on occasion. I have been known to do the same. What if you found one of these postcards from long ago. The image is faded and the edges are tattered, the ink is smudged and the stamp is gone but you can still see the address and the notation. Have you ever thought where that card came from and what circumstances surrounded it? One man has and he wrote a book about it. Well, not really. See, this man is Jason Rodriguez and he is a comic book (should I say Graphic Novel?) artist. He also knows a load of other comic artists and for fun--now for profit we hope--he and his friends would make up stories about where these cards came from. The book is called "Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened" and it is great.

I have been a comic fan since I was little and it is something that never really leaves you if you loved it. If done well, the stories can open a whole new section of your imagination that you never thought about. They are a beautiful way for people to enjoy art and enjoy story at the same time. If you find them immature and juvenile, I will argue too you that all early art was a type of Comic book. Think of the Sistine Chapel. Important huh? Nice work of art? What STORY does it tell? If you don't know, it tells a whole series of stories from the old testament. The Creation of the Universe, Noah and his children, it is all right there for you to read without a single word.

Jason has put together this great book of stories based of postcards he has found through the years. He is going to bring some o the original postcards and some of his original works to the store so people can take a look at them as well. If thing all go according to plan, he is also going to bring along a fellow artist who will be complete with sketch book and pencils and probably drawing pictures of the Dupont store. You should stop by and see him now, because he s headed to San Francisco for a comic convention right after that where he will join in the fine tradition of stealing Jim Lee's robe and pretending he is Thor while someone flicks the light switch on and off really fast to make it look like a portal to another world is opening up as he jumps up and down on the bed.
Maybe those are only things I do when I am on vacation but if we are lucky, maybe Jason will send us a postcard.

Oh Yeah, Dupont Cirlce 7pm Tuesday the 24th. Be there!

Nothing is more patriotic than July Fourth. The very day our nation was born. Oh hey, does anyone remember when that happened? I mean the year of course, what year did our great nation spring into existence? If you responded by saying the date that is printed on all those Centennial Quarters you have stashed in your sock drawer I argue that you are incorrect. In fact, I am certain that no one knows for certain what day our country started. If you ask David McCullough, we were born in 1776, David Stewart will tell you it was 1787 and I just read in Leviathan that the war was over in 1783 when Franklin, Adams and Jay accepted the surrender at the Treaty of Paris.

Whenever this place was born, we have picked July Fourth to have the party. These little parties take place in all corners of the nation and normally involve the roasting of something dead over open flame and the consumption of vast quantities of light beer. These parties will not exclusively revolve around the roasting of flesh, this is only something to be done in the afternoon between government sponsored activities. The morning time is taken up by staking out territory on some stranger's lawn at the crack of dawn where we hold a space with blankets and lawn chairs so other people can't take our prime, parade-viewing spot. The smart ones bring sun block, the rest court skin cancer with rolled up sleeves while they watch the local cheerleaders, city authorities, and Veterans of Foreign Wars preform a dehydrating, 32 mile march along the gooey asphalt of main street. The evening is spent in a semi-drunken stupor on another blanket fort while explosions rip the sky overhead. After this 16 hour, sun soaked orgy of light beer, roasted pork products, and ear splitting public firework display some people feel like the only way to top this off is to set fire to the neighbor's house with an assortment of legal and not-so-legal explosive devices.

The Fourth has now come and gone. Here in DC, about 300 thousand people went down to watch the local high school cheerleaders march. I went fishing with my brother in stead of fighting that many souls in the City. We did partake of the roasted dead animal fest in the evening right about the time the sky opened up and Mother Earth expressed her displeasure toward the Mid Atlantic. I wasn't on the Mall, but I heard the tornado warning and that people were being evacuated into the Smithsonian buildings. I think someone was trying to send a message. . .Did we listen? No. We waited until the skies cleared a little and then fired volley after volley of black powder and wacky chemicals up into those angry skies. That is the American way. Fight back at all costs.

What sort of cool things are going on in DC now that it is 200 degrees and humid? Lots of good things! This week we have Chuck Klosterman at Lansburgh on Monday, and again on Tuesday at the Wonderland Ballroom, both events start at 7pm. A great new author named Mike Carey will be joining us out in Courthouse. You may recognise his name if you are a reader of comic books. He has been writing for better comic houses for years. His work on "Lucifer" got him nominated for an Eisner Award, he has written over 40 issues of "Hellblazer" as well as being the longtime writer for "X-men" (Sans Modifier) On top of all that he was boon in the same town as those four guys that wrote music and started a bit of a ruckus when they came to America and went "wooooo." With any luck, Mike will sound a bit like Ringo Starr. For all the big fun, come out to see him and check out his new book "The Devil You Know" on Thursday, July 12th starting at 7 pm.

That is all for me this week. I took three days off last week and still ended up with over 30 hours. I swear I have some sort of illness. I am taking applications for interns if anyone wants to learn how to be an event coordinator. I can promise hard work, a difficult computer system and all the free galleys you can read. If anyone is interested please email me at events@olssons.com.