Publishing from backstage! 11-11-10 Wonderful reviews are coming in for the new book!  The book publication party is set for Friday night Nov. 19 at Cloud 9 Restaurant in Rehoboth - with music by the amazing Viki Dee. Come join us 5:30-8pm....also Come to a signing and reading on Sunday, Nov. 21 3-5pm at the CAMP Rehoboth Community Center on Baltimore Ave. in Rehoboth.  Here's a preview of a column about a very frustrating day I had! I was seriously out of my element all day today. After traveling all over for book signings and readings – having fun in P-Town, New Orleans, Chicago and more, I decided to stick close to home this weekend for Delaware Authors’ Day. The state-sponsored event took place in the Delaware Agricultural Museum across the street from the Dover Nascar track. I should have known better. I arrived to discover I was to set up in front of the goat breed exhibit. After schlepping my own table, chair, and carton of books I felt like an old goat. As I unpacked my hot-off-the-press new book For Frying Out Loud – Rehoboth Beach Diaries, I noticed I was underdressed. There were people in Civil War garb, folks dressed for a White House  dinner and a couple of women still dressed for Halloween.  The man next to me boasted of having published 30 volumes about Hessian soldiers in the Revolutionary War, though his plastic spiral bound books seemed to have been published by Kinkos. I was surrounded by authors peddling badly bound copies of books with titles like The Last Hope is Jesus  and Sex with Unicorns – How I Talk to God. A young woman came up to my table, read a blurb about A&M Books and asked “What is a feminist press?” I sized her up. She seemed to have most of her teeth and wasn’t dressed for a Rebel encampment so I took a chance. “Actually, it’s a lesbian press, but in the 70s no printer would touch a lesbian book with a stick,” I answered. The woman said nothing and actually took a step back, apparently afraid to catch, as Rachel Maddow says, “the gay.” Once everybody was set up, a dribble of patrons came in the doors. People would walk by, pick up my book, smile at the cover and turn it over to read the back. I could tell the exact moment when they got to the word gay. One woman flipped through the pages, stopped and said “Oh, I opened to the wrong page. You wrote ‘pray for Obama Care’, I really can’t talk to you, you’re a Commie,”  and she fled. One bright spot had a man picking up the book, oohing and ahhing at the photo and then saying ”Wow, that’s a beautiful dog.” I thought I saw another man making a beeline for my table but it turned out he wanted to read about goat breeds. And I got nervous when the Civil War author began cleaning his sword. Finally, a lady came by, picked up the book, turned it over and read the entire back of the book and then said “For Frying Out Loud. Is it a cookbook? What do you fry?” That was my exit cue. And I came back to Rehoboth to discover that while I was sitting on my butt trying to peddle books to Tea Party people, I’d sold 20 books in our independent bookstore. It’s so nice to have a niche to come home to…. 9-28-10  For Frying Out Loud is in proofing, with last minute adjustments being made..off to the printer Oct.1.  Publication date Nov. 1...Wooo-Hoooo!!! 8-14-10 The Carousel is reviewed in curve magazine...it's a good one! 4-23-10 Things are heating up! Amazon.com lit up after a generous and amazingly wonderful review by novelist and film maker Shamim Sharif. Features on Stefani & The Carousel appeared in CentralNewJersey.com, Sussex Weekly, and much more. 3-17-2010 Great News!  Just found out that  my column "Going Bats" in Delaware Beach Life Magazine won first place in the 2009 DE Press Association Contest.  Click here to read it! 3-4-2010  The books have come off the press and are winging their way to Rehoboth....delivery some time early next week. Who wants to lend a hand unloading the truck???? Get ready for the Publication Party, April 10 We got a great mention on the brand new Lambda Literary web site in the Book Buzz column.... "Stefani Deoul is producing a new series, Haven, based on Stephen King’s short story, “The Colorado Kid,” for the SyFy Network in Halifax.  But she’ll also be flying home to the U.S. to promote her debut novel, The Carousel, published by A&M Books.  For details, check out A&M’s revamped website.