Hyperventilating with Nick Earls – on the perils of literary fandom

On Sunday I was lucky enough to catch Nick Earls at the Brisbane Writers Festival where he was promoting his new book. Nick is a delightful speaker, full of funny anecdotes about people he has met on his book tour and the process of researching The Fix. Some authors swing trips to Europe or Japan but Nick went on a mini-golf tour of the Gold Coast and chatted with an inebriated stripper in Coles on Sunday morning. The glamour of an author's life.

The crowd was in stiches when he talked about people hyperventilating in his book signing queue and fainting with excitement. Hilarious.  Until I am standing in the book signing queue, clutching my copy of his book. It is quite a long queue. Easily long enough to have too much time to think about what I want to say to Nick. And suddenly hyperventilating and fainting doesn't seem so unlikely.

The queue inches forward and at last it is my turn. I am overcome with excitement. I am also recovering from the flu and the stress of meeting my favourite author is having a bad affect on my sinuses. Nick looks up and my nose starts running. I pull out a tissue and with it come several other tissues that scatter on the table in front of him. I sneeze. At last I manage to gush how much of an inspiration he is to me. I tell him that I have two books coming out soon and how I owe it all to Zigzag Street. I am probably quite scary. He is probably wishing I did hyperventilate and faint. But, hey, I bought his book. And when you're an author that counts for a lot.

Next week, I spill coffee on Veny Armanno…

Has anyone else ever had an embarrassing moment with a literary star?