This Weekend Feb 3, 2024 (and next week) at The Bookstore

Quick note, my friends, three items on the agenda today.
First, tomorrow night Saturday Feb 3, the Friends of Mason Library in Gt. Barrington are presenting a free screening of “Hello, Bookstore”. Doors open (231 Main Street) at 6:30 for pre-movie chat and free refreshments, with the showing to start at 7 p.m. 
 
Filmmaker Adam Zax and I will be on hand for a Q & A afterwards. It’ll be fun to see you there!
 
Next, I am featured on Bill Shein’s latest Berkshire Argus podcast. It’s about an hour long piece and can be found at https://www.berkshireargus.com
 
Actually, Bill did this as a kind of run up to the Mason Library screening.  As usual, it is a lot of fun for me to tell stories about The Bookstore, how I got here, what we do, etc.  Bill had some good questions, good observations as well.  He’s an old friend and it was a pleasure to sit and chat with him.
 
And finally, but this probably won’t be the last time you’ll hear about this, our next big event at The Bookstore will be next Friday, Feb 9 at 6 p.m., a joint reading by Mary Pope Osborne, Roxana Robinson, and Rachel Vail, three of the 37 authors of the just-about-to-be-published novel “Fourteen Days”.
 
Here’s the conceit: 
How do you bring together 37 writing superstars who don’t know one another to collaborate on a single novel that is NOT an anthology or Decameron?
 
You create an entirely new literary form where each writer is tasked with inventing one character in an eccentric cast of New Yorkers who live in the same apartment building during the COVID-19 lockdown.  Then you get editors Margaret Atwood and ‘Doug Preston of The Authors Guild to weave them together to become one literary voice, while keeping the identities of the writers secret.
 
It’s really an incredible book!  I just finished reading it yesterday, alternating between speeding through the stories and pacing myself, to keep the tension alive.  Fourteen days, 37 writers, and the kinds of stories you just don’t get anywhere else.  
 
That’s Friday, February 9 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Mary Pope Osborne, Roxana Robinson, and Rachel Vail, here at The Bookstore, for a reading from Fourteen Days!  Don’t miss it.
 
Matt