Bookapalooza, November 19th was supposed to be our launch date for Purgatorium. Instead, ID Press set up a small display with copies of the second print run, and gave the rest of the table to Myth Hawker Travelling Bookstore, my other, other sideline venture.

I can't complain about sales at my table overall. Bookapalooza was only five hours long, but we averaged about 1.4 sales every ten minutes, so that's all right.

But what really made our day was that Mark Leslie Lefebvre was at Bookapalooza. His was the first talk of the day. I missed it, and Connie was manning the ID Press / Myth Hawker tables, but Tobin and Dale managed to go, and to catch up with Mark Leslie after the fact.

In December, 2014, Mark Leslie Lefebvre was the director of Author Relations at Kobo. He's also an editor (Tesseracts 16, among others) and author of short and long form (I just recently picked up his most recent novel I, Death). It was during his talk - the same one he was giving in 2016 at Bookapalooza - that Connie got the idea to form an anthology in the first place.

So, we (ID Press) thought it would be a good idea to tell him in person about Purgatorium. After all, Connie personally thanked him in the dedication page, so we really wanted to catch up with him. We even entertained the scary idea of asking for him to write up a blurb for Purgatorium. We told him right up front about the production problems, and we told him why we had delayed the launch.

That's when Mark Leslie changed this entire month into something spectacular.

He didn't just want to write up the blurb.

He wants us on his podcast when the book is launched.

He came to us with his copy of Purgatorium and asked for our signatures.

And then, he tweeted about meeting us, and about how much he was inspired, because he had been our inspiration. As he called it - a 360-degree perpetual motion machine of inspiration.

And just to top it off, I promptly sold out of both Tesseracts 16 and I, Death.

And then...I noticed that Michael Kelly of Undertow Publications had commented on one of my photos from earlier that day, saying that I was at Bookapalooza. He had just received copies of Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three. These anthologies are reprints of the best in short, speculative fiction as chosen by Michael Kelly and a guest editor.

Well, Michael swung by with five copies for me to sell. He had heard a bit about Purgatorium, and asked a bit more about ID Press. Then he suggested we send him a .pdf of Purgatorium, to see if there are any of our short stories that he (and his guest editor) might select for Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Four.

And then I promptly sold out of Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, and I have only one copy left of Volume Two.

So all in all...what a weekend!

And we're still just getting started.

Purgatorium Part Five: Bookapa-Wowsers

Pat Flewwelling

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