Quite a few people in the queue had never been to a book signing before and didn't know what to do. I wanted to say 'Just buy the bloody book!', as two days earlier we'd had a Peter Andre event which had bought the town to a standstill, but resulted in a mere 48 copies sold. After talking to people in the queue, I discovered that most of them weren't sure if we'd be selling the book and bought it in advance, just to be on the safe side. I was flaberghasted. Why did they think that were holding the event? In what perverted universe would a bookshop have an author signing without having the books in stock? But I had to remind myself that these were people who didn't normally visit a bookshop.
Chris Ryan's fans were more obliging with their wallets and it was great to see how much they enjoyed the event. As for Chris himself, he was a gentleman and it was hard to imagine that this shy, softly-spoken man was a former SAS soldier.
I searched on Google images to get a photo of Chris Ryan, but it gave me several options:


Even in the 1970's, I'm sure that the SAS wouldn't permit this

He's too bald
He doesn't look like a man who could kill with his bare hands
This is a Chris Ryan, but not the Chris Ryan


2 comments:
this is an hillarious post! haha
Signings. The thing is if you're enough of a fan of the author to actually attend a signing, the chances are you've already bought the book as soon as it came out, so the shop hosting the signing could lose out. I admit that I don't think I've ever bought a book at the signing itself, as I've always had it already...
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