TX | Machine Mean

Barnes & Noble Book Signing Event w/ Author Thomas S. Flowers

On April 2, 2016, at the Webster, Texas, Barnes & Noble location, your blog host with most will be on site signing copies of both Dwelling and Emerging, books one and two from the Subdue Series, published with Limitless Publishing, LLC. The event will start at roughly 11am and end when B&N finally wises up and boots me to the curb, which should be around 2pm (CST). They will no doubt be a table somewhere inside, jeez…I hope they don’t put me on the porch. Just look for the section of store with the huge crowd of crazed fans (wink wink). Or, more likely, the crowd gathering around a bowl of free candy…hey, whatever works, right? You may not know, but this will be my very first book signing event. Seeing how things go, I’d love to do one with my local public library or with my alma mater school library, UHCL. OR BOTH!!! Think of the possibilities (laughing sinisterly). Ethan, the customer relations manager with B&N, was kind enough to throw this shindig together, so my hats off to him. All joking aside, I am very much looking forward to the book signing, leaving my dark cave if only for but a few hours, to meet and greet with potential readers, because that’s what these kinds of events are for, to meet people, not necessarily to sell them anything. Book signing are about making the public, those outside of our family and friend bubbles, aware of our books. If you’ve got a book signing of your own, keep that in mind.

So, you may be wondering what I’ve got planned to prepare for this awesome event…even if you’re not, you can still read on, I won’t judge.

Candy. Yup. Got to lure my victims, oops, I mean potential readers with sweets, before subjecting them to the poison of my writing…
Specially made bookmarks, free with purchase of either of my two books that’ll be available at the table.
Business cards, to whomever will take one (wink). These are specifically made to match my “author logo.”
Newsletter signup sheet, as newsletters seem to be all the rage nowadays…you can sign up here, if you’d like (wink wink).
Pens, and not just any old pen, nice permanent black ink pens.
Informational flyer, of all my books, not just the ones at the book signing event, and all the places they can find me.
Award winning smile, I’m not a smile guy. I have what’s known as “resting veteran face,” and can come across as kind of a grump. I’ll need to work on this and maintain awareness of my body language and facial expressions.

My list, as you may have surmised, is tailored toward letting people/stranger get to know me, not tailored to selling anything in particular. If people stop by and buy, fantastic, and I’m sure B&N will appreciate it too. My sole goal is to greet as many people as possible and to make them aware that there is in fact an Iraq War veteran in their community who writes and blogs dark fiction. This is an awareness campaign as much as it is a book signing campaign.

If you’re in the neighborhood, and/or would like to come out and meet me, I’ll be at B&N on April 2, 2016 between 11am and 2pm. You can find the event page at B&N here OR you can check out the upcoming book signing on my Facebook event page, here. As always, thank you for stopping by, and I hope to see YOU out at B&N in April.

Thomas S. Flowers is the published author of several character driven stories of terror. He grew up in the small town of Vinton, Virginia, but in 2001, left home to enlist in the U.S. Army. Following his third tour in Iraq, Thomas moved to Houston, Texas where he now lives with his beautiful bride and amazing daughter. Thomas attended night school, with a focus on creative writing and history. In 2014, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History from UHCL. Thomas blogs at machinemean[dot]org where he reviews movies, books, and other horror related topics.