The Beauty Boutique Adventure
Holding a book signing at a skin spa is definitely "thinking outside of the books." (Good one, yes?)
Sister novelist Carrie Knowles and I wrapped up the recent Virginia leg of our Crazy Ladies Book Tour in the most charming of locations: Rosehips Beauty boutique and skin spa in Newport News.
The proprietor and beauty genius is Kat Hall, who once held the informal title of person who did the best facial in Raleigh. 
Recently relocated to the watery edge of Virginia, she invited Carrie and me to bring our tour to her new place.
It was delightful; another friend brought in lunch which we ate in the squishy chairs in her soothing low-light back relaxing room. Then Carrie and I both got one of Kat's famous organic facials.
I was still lying on a table with hot towels on my face when I heard people start arriving in the next room for the reading. And I hadn't given a thought to worrying about whether people would show up and how many, would there be a good turn-out, etc.
Carrie went out and got the show started without me and I dreamily got dressed. I finally wandered out to the shop area in the front, with its glittering papers and sweet-smelling creams and sprays. 
I was so relaxed from the facial that I forgot to talk for a while, just smiled and looked at everybody and left the book talk to Carrie.
It's an interesting group of book lovers who come to a signing at a beauty boutique: one a former model who later became a flight attendant on private jets of the very famous, one a long-time member of the organization founded by psychic and health clairvoyant, Edgar Cayce. And then of course there was our lovely host: aesthetician, beautifier, and reiki master Kat.
I eventually returned to my ordinary self: jabbered — appropriately, I hope — about my novel, Cobalt Blue. Then drove the five-ish hours home, with one stop for me to get a large fast-food chocolate milkshake, totally inappropriate but still blissful .
Categories: 2013
Tags: Carrie Knowles, Cobalt Blue, Edgar Cayce, Kat Hall, Newport News, Rosehips Beauty
Comments
Awesome! I think you should make such signings a regular “thing”! Sounds like my kind of place. 🙂
Yeah, people getting their nails done would be a captive audience.
I would love to have been there (esp. since i am a Life Member of the A.R.E. (Edgar Cayce Foundation.) I bet you didn't know that! I would also love to have a facial by Kat! I took a Level one Reiki class once, but I didn't keep up with it. More's the pity.
Well, you’re into all sorts of cool stuff, kenju!
I LOVE your post Peggy! Thanks for your "thatagirl"* to me: "The proprietor and beauty genius is Kat Hall, who once held the informal title of person who did the best facial in Raleigh."
*thatagirl is the feminine form for "attaboy" I've just decided. I prefer it to the attagirl recognized by Google. Just "thinking outside of the books" ha ha ha. Good one, yes.
Definitely a good one, Kat. And the first time I heard that best-in-Raleigh thing was when you first moved in to office space with Karen Tam. She said she had a new neighbor who she’d heard did the best facial in Raleigh.