Bridget McNulty

My (fun) disaster:

// June 18th, 2009 // Life (and the living of it), Strange Nervous Laughter, book launch, travelling

The plan seemed simple enough:
While in New York City, organise a relaxed, informal reading somewhere pretty (i.e. in Central Park) and bake cupcakes to give to people so they have a little something to snack on while I read. Then invite all my friends and contacts in New York (check out the lovely invitation here), and get them to invite all their friends and contacts.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, global warming. In a word (or two).
You see, NYC is not usually wet or rainy in June – it’s summer, it should be deliciously sunny. But the weather has been a little crazy of late, and the craziness did not work in my favour… The forecasts said scattered thundershowers would hit at 6pm. They hit at 2.30pm. My reading was at 3pm.

We’d already baked delicious cupcakes, by this stage (chocolate with vanilla icing and mini M&Ms… yummy!)

And we’d figured out how to transport them across town on the subway (by buying a couple of doughnut boxes from the doughnut store across the road)…

When we exited the subway, it was breezy and warm, and we thought we’d missed the morning rain and were going to miss the evening storms. But when we arrived at Central Park…

The heavens opened. It poured. Bucketed. Deluged us with rain. So that anyone in their right mind, looking out the window in the hour before the reading and deciding whether to come to an outdoor event in the park, would have decided against it (I was already there, so I couldn’t change my mind!)

Still, I had a couple of extremely loyal friends who decided to brave the weather, most notably my Number One Fan, Jess (in her handmade t-shirt)…

Once we realised that the rain was not going to let up any time soon, we traipsed off through the park handing out free cupcakes. It was so much fun! I started off on the baseball field, and people came flocking towards me when they heard the magical word ‘cupcake’ (combined with the equally magical word ‘free’)… and then we walked through the park and I approached people and asked if they wanted a cupcake. They were either totally delighted, or looked a little scared. It was very amusing!

We ended up in a Starbucks (because it was warm, cosy, and quintessentially American)…

Where I gave a short reading, after all…

It was, to all intents and purposes, a complete disaster. But it was a really fun disaster! As I led my merry band of wet friends through the park, handing out cupcakes, I was loving it! It was great fun.

Now, this could have been because I’d had an amazing hour-long interview on Cosmo Radio the day before, and I felt as if I’d already done my bit for book marketing; or because it was the end of a really wonderful three week friend tour all over the East Coast of the USA; or even because I have recently realised that I don’t like organising publicity stuff for myself any more (give me online stuff to do and I’m happy, organise something for me to do and I’m even happier, but don’t put me in charge please!)

It might even be that I am slowly, ever so slowly, learning to let go and see where life takes me. That I am finally learning to be a bit more easy-going and not trying to control everything. Whatever the reason, I had myself an extremely fun disaster of A Reading in Central Park.