We did have fun at the Patrick Heath Public Library in Boerne last Saturday – although, alas, I don’t think we sold many books, those of us who were in the community room. The new library building is altogether splendid, and with a lovely landscaped area in back and to one side, and with a large open space in front that may eventually become a sort of overflow adjuct to historic Town Square. If we had been in the old library building, which was in one of the old buildings edging Town Square, we might have had more foot-traffic from Boerne’s Market Days … but then there wasn’t room for anything like that in the old building, and as the saying goes, if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle. But still – I was at a table across from Jeff Morgenthaler, who does local history non-fic, and whom I have known about for years: the owners at Berkman Books in Fredericksburg now and again ventured that they would love to host a joint event for the two of us, as he did in non-fic what I did as a ripping good yarn in the Adelsverein Trilogy. The book of his which I always recommend to readers is  The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country, for a good and readable overview – of exactly what the title says – and an encyclopedic bibliography, for those who want more, more, more.

Next table to us was Jack Lyndon Thomas – a Vietnam veteran with several novels focusing on that war – among them one with the intriguing title The Monsoon Killed the Tiger. He hit it off with my daughter, both being veterans of wars four decades apart.  Really, though – I think the biggest hit of the whole book event was a kid’s book author, Tina Mollie Fisher – her book is called Pig’s Big Adventure … and she brought a tiny, very young piglet as part of her table … well, table and enclosure display. The piglet’s name was Princess, but I wouldn’t have been able to resist naming it Bacobit, or Wilburina.  I can see why people get them as pets, and then are totally appalled when they grow to three hundred pounds or so. And that was my Saturday ….

We will do it all again next year – it’s only about the second time for this book event, and sometimes these things take a while for word to get around. Even without a pig ….