It was really interesting, both from a bookseller/reader perspective and from an aspiring writer perspective. Then were the interesting business stories, including some about the process of designing the cover for this new rerelease. She told me about some of the less successful moments in her creative career, like the time a retailer didn’t sell/put her books out on the floor and ended up returning so many to the publisher that she was advised to change her nom de plume before publishing again. We had Ice Planet Barbarians on our #booktok table, and Dixon mentioned that it felt wrong to see it there next next to books by authors like Sarah J. From hers, everything could still fall through. It was fascinating, because from my perspective Dixon had done it. Talking to her, though, I got to hear about the parts of the success story that aren’t usually told: the long slog before the “overnight” success, the doubts and insecurities, the moments where everything goes wrong. That is the fantasy I’ve had since I was very young. From the outside, that looks like a slam dunk. She self-published and then enough people started talking about her books online that they totally blew up in popularity and now they’ve been picked up by a traditional publisher and are showing up in bookstores. As an amateur writer looking at Dixon’s career, her trajectory looks like the dream. Romance is not my thing at all, but I’m willing to try things when enough people say they’re good… or when I get to meet the author. Now, Ice Planet Barbarians is not the sort of book I would ever pick up. She popped into the Barnes and Noble where I work to sign some books and I got her to sign one to me. Every author I met, I’d get their autograph.Įnter Ruby Dixon. And then I stupidly missed out on Rebecca Roanhorse‘s signature, too. I listened to her talk for two hours, had a personal conversation with her about writing, and even got a hug. That one hurts even more, because I actually met her. I met Jewell Parker Rhodes at a writer’s conference but for some blockheaded reason didn’t get her signature.
I’ve been regretting missing her signature ever since, but then I made the same dumb mistake again. Fast forward a few months and I discovered the Sammy Keyes series and adored it. When I was in eighth grade, Wendelin Van Draanen visited my school and-because I hadn’t read any of her books at the time-I didn’t get her autograph.
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