Live television is supposed to be a tidy checklist; stack the books, point to a few titles, smile and cut to the next segment.
On WQAD’s The Current, Jan LaRoche of the Moline Public Library did exactly that. Nineteen Quad Cities authors, an invitation to the upcoming Saturday showcase, and a quick nod at books for a diverse set of interest. She reached for Palmyra and then as she reached for the next title, on camera, one book declined to stay put.
It flew off the table unannounced!
The laugh that followed was small and honest. “Oh, there we go.” And in a quick beat, “That happens.”
It was Monstruo: A Beauty and the Beast Novela.
Not every title on that table made a bid for the floor, but mine did. If you were watching, you saw a local-author segment become, for two unscripted seconds, a physical comedy about a book that refused to stay in the nosebleed section.
I was not named in the narration but that detail is familiar. The last time a camera found my work, El Príncipe Berberisco sat in the B-roll of a KWQC story about someone else’s book. This time the presence was noisier. The novel didn’t just share the frame, it left the frame.
There is something almost too on-the-nose about a Beauty-and-the-Beast retelling making a scene. Monstruo is a story about what will not stay buried: an archaeologist, a caretaker who is more than he first appears, and a relic that keeps its own odd appearances. On a news desk in the Quad Cities, the object itself decided the same thing. It would not sit quietly among the other spines.
I am not going to pretend this was destiny, because it was simply gravity, a very crowded table, and the unpredictability of live TV. But what I like best about the tumble is that viewers remember the odd thing that happened. They remember the laughs and they remember the title that would not stay put, or at least that’s the hope.
The segment itself is worth watching for more than the fall. Jan talks about why a public library bothers to gather writers at all, how writing is lonely work, how neighbors are the people publishing the books on the next table, how a Saturday in a meeting room is a place for that work to be seen.
You can find the story here:
WQAD: Moline Library local author showcase
And the broadcast here:
WQAD News 8 on YouTube
And our channels revised copy with an exit promocard here:
Flying off the Shelf! Monstruo: A Beauty and the Beast Novela on WQAD News 8’s The Current
Recognition, again, did not arrive as a headline. It arrived as a book that would not stay on a crowded coffee table. And I’ll take it! A story that wants to be found should at least have the courage to fall in one’s lap.
“A story that wants to be found should at least have the courage to fall in one’s lap.”
— from the Writer’s Desk
Thanks to Jan LaRoche, to Moline Public Library, and to whoever stacked that table just loosely enough. And to anyone who rewound the segment to see which cover hit the floor: Monstruo is the one that wouldn’t sit still. I hope it finds you next with less of a thud and more of a huzza!
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