day after the night before

last night i met marian keyes. she is currently in australia promoting her latest novel, 'anybody out there'. i love her work and think she's grand, so i thought i'd take myself along to one of her events at the arts centre. i gave my husband an out and went alone, and though i think he would have thought she was funny, he would have been one of about five men in a the room of 250 people (and that was including marian's husband and one of the penguin publicists).

yes, marian belongs to penguin uk. when i was on the promo trail for my novel last year, i shared the fact that i love marian keyes with my own publicist, aimee. aimee told me back then she'd heard a rumour that marian would be out in early 2006, and said she'd give me more information if i promised not to stalk her (i promised, but did have my fingers crossed behind my back at the time).

i actually stuck to my finger-crossin' word, though i did decide to drop marian a line off her website (i figure if authors didn't want to be contacted, they wouldn't have a 'contact me' page on their websites - so technically, not stalking). i intro-ed myself as a fellow penguin and asked when they would be out here. marian's husband emailed back and thanked me for my kind words, confirmed the dates, and said he looked forward to maybe meeting when they were in australia. a while later i had a piece in the age ('tears and cheers' - you can read it on my site) where i referred to one of marian's books. so i emailed a copy of it to them to add a face to the name (no, still not stalking).

anyway, last night. when i bought the ticket, i was talking about how excited i was that i might finally get to meet her, and my husband suggested i give her a copy of my book. and so last night, i did! marian said she loved the cover and looked forward to reading it, and so did her husband. she signed my copy of her novel to 'shalini, fellow penguin'. i was on such a high after i left the signing that i really needed to let off some steam, so luckily i had a heavy, loud, head-bangin' gig to go to. then i drank too much beer, smoked too many cigs, had a pear for dinner, and fell asleep mid-sentence, blabbing on to my husband about what a fab evening i had.