Caridad Ferrer | Fear of Booksignings?

Or, a nervous author faces her first solo booksignings.

Let me preface this by saying, I am an inherently shy person. Those of you who
know me personally… Shut. Up. And quit laughing. It's true. I am painfully shy
and always have been. It just manifests itself in weird ways. See, if I'm
introduced to someone first, I'm okay. I can talk about any subject under the
sun. If I'm part of a small group, you'd be hard pressed to shut me up, really.
Tell me I have to walk into a room full of strangers and introduce myself,
you'll find me over in the corner in a fetal position clutching my blanky. This
is, essentially, what a booksigning feels like to me. Add that to the horror
stories I've heard about authors sitting at a table and the only people who
talk to them are the folks looking for the bathroom and mix in a healthy dose
of overactive writer imagination and you can figure that sleep's been pretty
hard to come by lately.