Friday, August 05, 2016

Chicken Ranch report no. 78: The story thus far

This week has been a whirlwind. Books came in. Then the wrong books came in. And much scrambling ensued. Yesterday was especially packed--I drove to Houston in the morning for a sit-down interview at KTRK-TV, which is, of course, the home station of the late Marvin Zindler. No word on when it will run, but I'd guess sometime tonight, as I have a signing 4:30 p.m. tomorrow at Murder By The Book in Houston for Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse.

After the KTRK interview, I went to La Grange for an event at the Fayette Public Library. I got into town early, so I stopped by the Fayette County Record and Visitor's Bureau and signed all of their copies of my book--there must've been at least 60 copies, combined. The event at the library was very well attended, and I'm happy to report the library sold out of their entire stock, so that I ended up selling seven books from the just-in-case stock I brought along. And that doesn't count the half-dozen books I personalized that people brought in already signed! In just the short amount of time between my signing stock at the newspaper and visitors' bureau, folks got in there and purchased copies to bring to me for my talk. That was amazing. Want to hear something else amazing? The Fayette County Record has since messaged me that their entire stock has sold out and they're placing a new order. I lost count of how many books I signed for them, but it was a lot. And all of them sold in less than a day. Goodness gracious!

There was a lot of great conversation and discussion that occurred at the library, but one woman came up and told me something that really struck a tone. She said, "Thank you for making it so we can talk about this again." Before, she said, the Chicken Ranch was a taboo subject even among the residents who thought it an interesting piece of history that should be embraced. Now, by publishing a high-profile book that treats it as serious history and not salacious or gossipy, those people are able to have an open discussion about its place in local history. I don't know about you, but for me, that's profoundly humbling.

I've been fortunate to have received a considerable amount of media coverage these past few weeks, so it seemed appropriate I put together a quick round-up of those stories here:

Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse is now listed on both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com for pre-order.

Title: Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse
Author: Jayme Lynn Blaschke
ISBN: 978.1.46713.563.4

Ghosts of the Chicken Ranch is still available:

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Chicken Ranch Central

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