This is a pretty short trip for visiting Meg, so I tried to not bite off too much during the one full day. I borrowed her drum carder to blend a bunch of blue/purple/pink fibers I bought a while back to spin into yarn later. We took the dog to the beach and managed to do that in between rain showers. I took them out to dinner at Betty’s and then we went to a Chocolate restaurant for dessert, where we all shared something called “Adult Chocolate Misbehavior:” tiramisu, rose cream, chocolate gelato and a shot of pomegranate wine. That was fun.

We also did book shopping. Bookshop Santa Cruz had a “blind date with a book” section going on in which they had books wrapped up and then a helpful bookmark indicating what kind of subject matter it was and what the plot details approximately were. You could not find out until you bought them what they were. This was actually pretty dang cool since they did give you a lot of details about what was going to be in the book, probably unlike your real life dates.

I saw several promising ones but ended up buying two. I took photos of the rest in hopes that someday I can guess what they were later.

For example: “blind date with romance” had the following:
* Robin Hood in space
* Heroine who is not who she seems
* ...neither is the hero
* Found family
* Steamy but with feels
* Chock full of intrigue, heroism, conflict and sexual tension.
The book was this one (Nightchaser, Amanda Bouchet), which seems to be highly recommended right about now and something I’ve been considering, so all right.

“blind date with an SFF rom-com” had the following:
* A fun technological fairy tale of the near future
* Social media, smartphones, and 24-hour availibility
* Crazy families, nefarious plots + a dreamy love interest
* Sci-Fi driven hijinks
* Sharp wit and memorable characters.”

The other one I got turned out to be Crosstalk by Connie Willis, which I don’t think I would have gotten had I but known--the back so far does not sound like all of that--but who knows? We’ll see.

I also bought a book called “How to Sell Your Art Online” that actually tells about storytelling as a selling point and mentions an artist who was selling cheap pieces a day with stories attached and how people got massively attached to buying these. I know I read some webpage online at some point about how someone was selling crap on eBay but with stories attached and then they made a lot of money...can’t recall what it was called though. This is a thing I should try.

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