Emily Giffin in Toronto!

Last night at the Yonge and Eglinton Indigo bookstore, Emily Giffin was signing her new novel, BABY PROOF, which is currently #2 on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list. (Was #1 a while ago... will be again after last night.) Congratulations, Emily! As she pointed out to the crowd, Canadian readers obviously have good taste. :-)

I had the pleasure of reading the ARC (advance readers copy) of BABY PROOF some months ago and it didn’t disappoint. My fellow drunk writer blogger Sinead and I are always debating what makes Emily’s books so compulsively readable and hard to put down. They don’t have big complicated plots. They aren’t suspenseful in a literal way. All three so far have had only one major conflict to be resolved… and yet, they’re gripping, page-turning—and really fun to read. Maybe Sinead and I will discuss this in more detail in a future Drunk Writer Talk Blog.

It was great to meet Emily in person and she was really engaging and funny as a speaker (and if by some chance, you happen to read this, Emily, I completely agree about that skank Angelina. I also hope you don’t hold your husband to his body part offer to bind your first manuscript—for his and your sake both!)

But as great as the evening was, it didn't live up to my naïve fantasy. I'd hoped I’d have a chance to chat with her more… Sob. As a writer of books featuring female protagonists who don’t always act in the most heroic manner, I really wanted to know more about her journey to publication—not to mention post publication. In fact, I’d planned to offer to buy her a drink after the signing. Little did I know that 200 people would show up. WOW. I stood for 2 hours. She smiled and posed for pictures and signed books for 2 hours.

But it was totally worth it. I can’t wait to see her presentation at the RWA Conference in Atlanta. It’s so nice to see a writer with such a great talent have so much success.