Last night, Adam and I met the lovely Caroline from Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture and squeezed into Fountain Bookstore to hear Cherie Priest read from her new steampunk novel, Dreadnought. I never read steampunk until the folks at Fountain turned me on to it. Now Adam and I are recommending Cherie’s books to family and buying them as Christmas presents. And I spent far too long last night tweeting with Adam (yes, we were in the same room) and our friend Chris about the event and steampunk couture.
My favorite moments and facts:
Cherie talked about licking books for fans.
Cherie said “bless his heart” at least three times, proof she is from the South.
“I was an overnight success after seven books in ten years,” Cherie said.
“I could have sold more copies from a trenchcoat in the park,” Cherie said, pantomiming opening a coat and displaying books during a discussion of her earlier novels.
Cherie and her husband had Batman and Catwoman figures as wedding cake toppers.
The marketing department wanted to make the original cover of Dreadnought “more steampunk” by putting aviators’ goggles on the nurse. A Victorian woman holding pistols in front of a dirigible isn’t steam punk enough?
We talked with Rebecca Joines Schinsky, aka the panty-throwing wild woman of The Book Lady’s Blog, about the upcoming Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood by Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr.
Cherie Priest on Virginia This Morning
Cherie’s posts on being in Richmond and reading at Fountain Bookstore
“The Fountain bookstore is a warm, eclectic joint in a very cool part of town, owned and staffed by fantastic people (one of whom was the fellow who lured me out there in the first place). The crowd was amazing…”
-Excerpt from Cherie’s blog
Read more of Cherie’s thoughts on Richmond and her signing at her blog.
A big ‘thank you’ goes to Fountain Bookstore and author Cherie Priest.
River City Fiction 
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