Before, After, and Really After, with Night Circus Bonus!!!

This blog post is a little more personal than usual...so please pardon the intrusion.  But there have been lots of requests to post photos of the Night Circus event, along with my new-but-temporary red hair, so here it goes.  Thanks for reading and we welcome your comments!

BEFORE

Most of you don't know me in real life, but up until 48 hours ago, I had very long hair.

DURING: here's all 10-13" of my hair, all chopped off for donation

And up until 24 hours ago, the remaining hair I had was dark blonde.

AFTER

Now I'm a redhead, but not a red found in nature.  And it was for a very specific purpose.  Tonight the Night Circus came to the Odyssey Bookshop, where I work, and I got to visit with, eat dinner with, and then introduce one of the rising stars of the book world, Ms. Erin Morgenstern.

AFTER-AFTER.  With my dog Roxanne in background

 For those of you who haven't read the book, there is significance in this book in dressing in all black, with one token of red--a scarf, a flower, a brooch, gloves--and those are the reveurs.  Reveurs follow the circus from town to town, continent to continent.  I consider myself one of the earliest reveurs, having read and fallen in love with The Night Circus several months ago, so when we booked an author event with Erin just one week after publication, I knew I wanted to do something special: I would dress all in black, and my token of red would be my hair.  The only problem is that hair of the particular shade I had in mind is not found in nature.  It can, however, be found at Sally's. 

I kinda like this placement of the glass vis a vis the dust jacket

If I had been truly hardcore, I would have bleached my hair and then dyed it Maraschino cherry red.  But I wasn't confident that I could rock that look for the next few months, so I opted for the temporary color. My long-suffering DH helped me color it this morning, and because he's all artistic and stuff, he used two shades: a darker metallic red for the undercoat and then brighter red highlights sprayed on top.  Good times!  I've also discovered throughout the day that I'm covered in what looks like red metallic dandruff, and my ears and neck look eerily sunburned, no matter how many times I wipe them off, so I guess there's a price to pay for the glamourous look.  And do you want to know something a little gross and not-so-glamourous?  Every time I blew my nose today, the snot came out a diluted metallic pink color, even though I was breathing through a towel during the entire color application.  That's some wicked (and tenacious) stuff, man!

Here you can see my husband's artistry a little better

But it was all worth it in the end.  Erin seemed pleased with our Night Circus display in the store, which we fashioned with a budget of only $12.  Good thing I had a skull, some vases, a red-swirly martini glass, and a giant sword at home to put to use!  Erin read to a full house and answered questions both in-store and through a live Twitter feed, courtesy of our sales rep, Ann. We sold lots of books (including to our first editions club) and have lots of signed ones left over for sale.  And they're all first printings--reserve yours today so that you can say you read Erin when....

And I think she also liked our enthusiasm for the book, not to mention my hair, even if I did shed a little metallic dandruff on her when we hugged good-night. 

Ann Kingman, Erin Morgenstern, and Odyssey Staffers, minus Sydney, who was actually working when this photo was taken.

The Night Circus display arrives without warning...I'm kinda glad we worked both a skull and a sword in there

~Emily