Here it is, boys! Here it is, world! Here’s the MAMA ROSE’S TURN book signing!
Attention all authors: if you are going to have a book signing event, by all means contact my friend, the one and only Richard Skipper, to MC your event! He brings style, fun and panache like you would not believe and made sure everybody had a fabulous time! I cannot recommend him enough. He is reachable through his website at http://www.richardskipper.com – so authors, go for it!
Richard asked me a lot of great questions about my research and all that I had uncovered about Rose Thompson Hovick, mother of Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc whose colorful parenting style inspired the Broadway musical GYPSY. Then we took questions from the audience.
The Quinn family was well represented, not only with my parents there from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and my cousins Joe and Blanqui Quinn from Toms River, but with my cousin Theresa Quinn Delahunt arriving all the way from Boston – what a surprise! Also there: my fabulous friends, terrific co-workers, magnificent authors Johanna Reiss and Donna Marie Nowak, actress Loria Parker, who will play Rose in the Ziegfeld Society’s new musical that will be based on my book on February 22nd, my grade school drama coach Judy Cole and my sixth grade music teacher, Tina Padas Mavroudis. Another big surprise was that four members of the cast of La Cage aux Folles, which I would go to see repeatedly when it was on Broadway to take a break from all of the grueling research that went into this book! Cast members Ashley Kate Adams, Christophe Caballero, Logan Keslar, and Matt Anctil were all there. Whenever there’s a fantastic person in my life, I stay in touch with them for always, and on Friday night, they all arrived!
Writer and Broadway blogger Jen Lau, of “Close Encounters of the Theatrical Kind” fame, who’s one of my best friends, took all the photographs. Here are a few, out of a few hundred, images from the evening. Enjoy!
Splendiferous Everything 