Awesome News!

I may have told some of you about this already, but I am exceedingly proud of myself for having taking it upon me to do a whole lot of extra work and planning and probably not get a whole lot of credit for it, that I had to share....

Back in February, John mentioned to me that Wil Wheaton, (who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek : The Next Generation, starred in Stand By Me, and now the blogger behind www.wilwheaton.net) had a book coming out in the very near future. He also said that we should have him in for a book signing. Well, at first I thought, yeah sure, that would be cool, but Peggy (our event coordinator) would never get it together enough to get someone like Wil in for a signing. Then I realized..... that I could! So I sent Wil a little email...

"I am a supervisor at the new Borders Bookstore in Hollywood, CA (on the corner of Sunset and Vine) and I was wondering if coming in for a talk/signing is something you might be interested in...
I know you probably get hundreds of e-mails like this, but I am interested in widening the scope of the events traditionally offered in our store, and thought you would be a great event for our store!
Let me know if this is something that you would be interested in doing, and I can get the wheels in motion. If not, I understand.
Thanks for your time.
-Julie Verive"

and thought I would never hear anything back....

The very next day, I open my email and in pops an email from Wil -

"Hey Julie,

YES!

I would love to do that. I'm CC-ing my publicity goddess, so she can be in the loop on this, too.

I look forward to talking about this with you further.

Wil"

and I was thrilled. So I continued correspondence with Wil and his "people" at O'Reilly Publishing, and got some ideas, but finally had to pass the official planning off to Peggy, the event coordinator.... Again, thinking nothing would come of it, I forgot about the whole thing for a while....

For some reason, last week I decided to email Peggy to see if she had actually followed up and made a plan with Wil and his "people." I get a response back within hours that basically they had decided to have the event this summer rather than spring because Wil's second book comes out in June/July. So they were thinking about having the event in July, and would I still be interested in hosting?

YES!

I would love to do that!

So it appears that Borders Hollywood will be hosting an afternoon with Wil Wheaton on July 18, 2004 at 2pm - all thanks to me! It is times like these that make me love my job and the opportunities that I have to make a difference in the lives of Greater Los Angeles geeks.