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Successful Media Preview Party for “Deadlines”
December 5, 2009
As a long-time reporter myself, I must acknowledge it’s difficult to woo members of the media, let alone wow them. But I gave it a shot when my wife and I invited our major contacts to Gaspare’s Pizzaria and Italian Restaurant in San Francisco on December 5, 2009. Gaspare’s, located on Geary Street at 20th Avenue – at the start of The City’s Richmond District, has been a major hang of mine ever since the late 1980’s. That’s when I moved to the Outer Richmond, a foggy, windswept part of San Francisco that has always had a strong draw for Irish-Americans and others of Celtic blood.
Gaspare's!
In that setting, Gaspare’s provides a dot of Mediterranean warmth. Part of that comes from the robust Italian food at reasonable prices – I maintain that the place makes the best thin-crust pizza in The City. But the biggest part derives from the personal charisma and generosity of Gaspare Indelicato himself. He’s a small-town boy from Sicily who came to America, and made it just big enough.
Gaspare doesn’t often hold private parties, but we’ve been pals ever since he regularly devoured my outdoor writing in the San Francisco Chronicle – which I regularly balanced by eating platters of his pesto linguini with extra garlic. Usually accompanied by a half-liter of the house red. When I asked Gaspare if I could hold a media book party there, he swiftly assented, saying, “Don’t worry about a thing, Paul, it’s going to be beautiful!”
And that it was. Gaspare’s staff pushed tables together in the center of the restaurant, creating family-style seating (for a BIG family). My wife Dawn and I scrambled about, putting up large posters made from the book cover, and stuffing promotional materials inside review copies, setting up a sound-system, etc. At noon, our first staff came in the door. Outdoor guidebook author Ann Marie Brown swept in like a gust of cool Sierra breeze. She would be our salesperson for distributing additional copies – besides the free ones I intended to hand to the press. Then Gordon Wright, tall, lean, and (as always) imbued with ironic humor and savoir faire. Gordon is an athlete who runs Outside PR from the SF Presidio, and he had volunteered to serve as doorman for this invitation-only party.
And then distinguished people of the press poured in, more than two dozen in all, while Gaspare’s staff began to turn out sumptuous pizzas and pour carafes of hearty red. It was a hoot to see Chronicle reporter Carl Nolte hob-nobbing with Bruce Brugmann of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, chatting away, thick as thieves. Best-selling mystery writer John Lescroart came with his wife the lovely Lisa. I was delighted to see him, because Lescroart’s ringing endorsement of “Deadlines” certainly helped put legs under it. And Sheriff Mike Hennessy and his illustrious mate Beverly came in the door, smiling and friendly as always – two leading SF citizens who also awarded some praise to my book.
When it came time to make some general comments and read from “Deadlines,” I was not nervous in the slightest. The convivial atmosphere in the room made putting on a presentation as comfortable as tugging on an old hat or pair of gloves. I plunged into one of the climactic scenes in the book – where the lead reporter is maneuvering to get his tale onto the front page of the fictional San Francisco Post-Dispatch. “Don’t worry,” I told the crowd. “I’m not giving away the store, here! I want to be generous to my readers, and provide them with many more than one climax.” A few laughed at the joke . . .
But all of them awarded me warm and sustained applause at the end. I bowed and said, “Thank you! That feels very good. And I can only hope that your response may be a harbinger of the way ‘Deadlines’ will be received in general.” And with that, a new novel was launched. Not with a bottle of champagne swung across the bow. But with a glass of hearty red chasing Gaspare’s thin-crust pizza down many a willing throat.