I was up for most of the night, thinking about this weekend’s book festival.

After the email she’d sent to all authors in attendance to promote their work, in which she explained this will be a “family-friendly” event, (so no descriptions or language that wouldn’t be allowed on network prime time), I’m gonna have to tell the organizer that I can’t do the reading.

How am I going to promote this book at a festival where families will be? How will I give a reading when I see a little kid sitting on her daddy’s shoulders? I assume all the other authors there have written children’s books. If not children’s books, then content just as safe. Whereas I’ve written something a tinge bit darker.

This is my first rodeo. Well, book festival. I’ve never even been to a book festival before. What’s it like? I’m picturing each author sitting at his or her own table surrounded by piles of books, waiting desperately his or her pad or phone to make transactions. I’m picturing me at my own table, watching everyone else interact without me. Maybe a handful of attendants will come and ask the dreadful question of what my book is about. At which, I’ll answer, “You know, it’s just this book, with stories and characters and like a setting and stuff.”

And then they’ll pick it up, open it, read it for a few seconds, as I watch their faces gradually curl up into snarls before they drop it back to my table and move onto the next table, never to return.

Come to think of it, I don’t know the last time I’ve been to any old festival. I’ve been to fairs, state fairs, where they sold funnel cakes and had rodeos (speaking of rodeos).

How scared will I be in front of those people, with the local media there capturing it on video and posting it on the evening news? Terrifying.

But it’ll be an experience that I can write about later. At least I can say that. Maybe I’ll even sell some copies. Which makes me wonder how the interactions will go with the consumers? This will be the first time when I won’t be the consumer but the supplier, of my own product, not someone else’s product, not the cutlery knives I used to sell when I was twenty-one (which were bought only by my parents).

I can’t begin to imagine how this is going to go. What if I get into an altercation with one of them? What if the POS I’ve just installed on my phone doesn’t work, and I get into a mess with someone who actually wants to buy my book?

What kind of questions will they ask me about it? What answers will I give? What if I have nothing to say? What if I just sit there stupidly with a completely frozen mind the whole time, with a crowd of thousands in front of me, a microphone pointed at my mouth like the barrel of a gun? What if some kid picks up my book and flips to a page to somewhere he shouldn’t? I’m not a children’s author.

Anyway, it’s still four days away. I still have plenty of time to freak out about it.