Apparently I’m supposed to be doing this, and so I am. Follow me if you dare. Twitter name is yrnameer.

Alright, that’s what’s technically known as “untrue.” She was, however, at Book Court about an hour beforehand. She’s been shooting Eat, Pray, Love in the neighborhood and they used Book Court as one of the locations, and she had apparently stopped back in for a little shopping.

I dropped by to make sure everything was in place for the big event and realized the woman I was passing in the aisle was none other than Julia Roberts. I then watched her out of the corner of my eye while I chatted with the manager about the launch party, finding myself speaking in a unnecessarily loud voice about the final preparations (”SO, I’LL BE READING FROM BEHIND THIS PODIUM?”) in the vain hope that she’d overhear me and decide that she’d like to stick around to hear an unknown writer natter on about his first novel.

Her eventual absence aside, the launch party was a great success. Due to everyone’s generosity, we sold every single one of the 50 copies of the book they had on hand, meaning I’ve now supplanted (at least temporarily) Thomas Pynchon as Book Court’s #1 best-selling author.