That’s what was displayed on the T-shirt of the dignified-looking man in the front row of Interabang Books in Dallas when I arrived for my author event. It was a line from my latest "Orphan X" thriller, a joke that is (I hope) funnier in context. He’d had it mocked up in the style of a rock band tour T-shirt and other readers were laughing and snapping selfies with him. I did the same before taking the microphone and by the time I was done speaking, the T-shirt had already been posted on various social media platforms and shared among fans.
Signing is my favorite part because I get to talk to readers one-on-one. A high school teacher had driven over five hours to get books personalized for her students. There were aspiring writers asking for advice, a woman who tearily recounted how a scene had brought up grief about the murder of a friend, fans joking about favorite characters, and a married couple arguing over which actor could play my protagonist. A young man told me in a hushed voice that when he’d been suicidal the summer before, his father had brought my books to him in the facility and that reading had kept him alive. I wanted to hug him but wasn’t sure if that would be weird. Instead, I signed his book with the most popular of The Ten Assassin’s Commandments, How you do anything is how you do everything, along with some words of encouragement.
