Bryan Christy

Day Three, Sunday, of the National Reptile Breeders’ Expo was our best day of the show.  We sold out the entire allotment corporate had given us for the show, and so did another bookdealer.  Luckily for me, Roxy Johnson had ordered backup and we were able to keep going all day.  We sold books straight from morning til close and the buzz was so good we were selling books on our way out of the building, setting our boxes down, opening up the cash box, and signing books right up to the last second. 

Roxy was phenomenal.  Our corner was a little warmer than it should have been (and I forgot deodorant), but she kept things rolling all day for three days straight.  She could talk the herp talk by the end of the show and I think there’s a bearded dragon in her son’s future.  She also had more stories to tell than your average gator wrassler which kept things lively.  Roxy gave me time to think about some of the more personal inscriptions I wanted to write.  Occasionally, the inscription was easy, Stay Out of the Sequel.

Rom Whitaker told me the final tally on the Gharial benefit auction was $25,000, which far exceeded his expectation.  Still, it’s a pittance compared to what is needed to preserve this reptile’s habitat.  Rom and I exchanged signed copies of our books, and I got the better of the deal, as his Snakes of India is a treasure. 

Importantly, the National Reptile Breeders’ Expo was another experience that suggests to me that The Lizard King has loosened the soil a bit around what have been very entrenched positions on wildlife trade.   That devoted conservationists, dedicated Fish and Wildlife agents, full-time legitimate wildlife dealers, and even smugglers can enjoy the story and use it to see into one another’s worlds is, I think, important.  I didn’t write The Lizard King for a political purpose, which is what most wildlife trade writing does.  I wrote it to recount a compelling story that took place inside a fascinating world.  I tried my best to give the perspective of the cops and of the robbers without judgment.  The audience I had in mind was anyone who enjoyed Into Thin Air or The Perfect Storm. 

I learned to ride a Seqway, ate chocolate covered meal worms and crickets, talked with some of the world’s reptile experts, and avoided a rather large restaurant tab.  As I said, it was a great weekend. 

After the Expo I got in my pickup and drove 14 hours home.  And so it goes.

A quick note to say that Day One of the official show, the sales day, was fantastic.  Our table is next to the registration desk so we got to see every single visitor to the show and to meet a hell of a lot of them, too.  The book sold like crazy.  Roxanne’s question to the people approaching our table was, Have you heard about the book?  Almost everyone said yes, and I was stopped at one point during the day while carrying a copy and somebody said, What is it about that book?  Everybody’s carrying one. 

We have a small monopoly but two other book dealers are also selling the book at the show and so it is an odd position to be selling your book at Borders’ table when others are selling it, too.  In any case it’s all good, as everyone seems to be doing well with it.  And I’m getting to meet alot of people.  Among the most rewarding is signing the book for teenagers.  The book has been getting some publicity lately as a good way to get teens reading.  The action, the science, the finding your way in life.  I’d love to see the book find a place of meaning with people at that reptilian stage in life when you’re still not sure what kind of mammal you’re going to evolve into.

The best news is what happened at the Gharial Conservation Auction.  To support the Indian Gharial I asked all the major figures in the book and some additional pioneers to autograph it for donation.  Mike and Ray Van Nostrand, Mark and Kim Bell, Tom Crutchfield, Dave and Tracy Barker, Pete Kahl, Bill Brandt, Bill and Kathy Love, Kamuran I can’t spell his freaking last name Tepedalen, Ralph Curtis, Wayne Hill, Craig Trumbower, and Rom Whitaker all signed the book.  I was late and walked in to a packed ballroom where the auctioneer, Joe Wasiliewski, said, Did you hear about your book?  It sold for $250! It was one of the two most exciting items auctioned all night, a battle so intense that Jeanne Brodsky, who won the book, stood up and yelled, Who’s bidding against me!  I’ll get the details tomorrow but it was a great tribute to the people involved that they would sign the book for auction, and a wonderful gift that Jeanne bought the book for such a generous price!

Because I’m here I haven’t had a chance to get my mail, and so it was a complete surprise to me when a dealer today told me he’d read about The Lizard King in Playboy this morning.  I downloaded a version in my hotel room to see what it said.  The first sentence was bang on for me.  I’d just written an email to Janet Maslin at the Times to thank her for her review and in the note I said something about how I wanted to write this non-fiction with the touch of someone like Elmore Leonard.  Non-fiction is so burdened by the requirement to tell everything about a subject many good books with good stories inside them go unread.  Tom Wolfe got new journalism going but what’s old about new journalism is the limited perspective–The Right Stuff was the astronaut world’s perspective, Hell’s Angels was an inside look at the Hell’s Angels.  Wolfe’s is phenomenal and pits man against nature, HST’s is less for the lack of opposition.  Thompson gets inside the Angels, but not their opponent, not really.  Finding two opposite worlds in conflict and writing both from the inside out is something I’d like to see more of in non-fiction.  In Cold Blood did it.  Wolfe was right when he said it took more research to do New Journalism. and it takes more still to bring it to stories in dramatic opposition.  The new new thing.

Sorry for the blathering.  You came to read Playboy’s review, September 2008:

Who knew the world of reptile smuggling was as high stakes and character rich as an Elmore Leonard novel?  Christy, a writer for Playboy and National Geographic, dives headlong into this subterranean world where a white python can fetch $100,000 and illegally smuggled frogs and frilled dragons are sold to pet shops and zoos.  The tactics of reptile smugglers recall those of drug criminals–falsifying documents, laundering funds.  This global operation centers on some of the notorious men of the Van Nostrand family.  Though they’re no less fearsome than the Corleones, Christy resists demonizing them.  Instead, he emphasizes our enduring fascination with the cold-blooded. 

Rating:  FOUR BUNNIES!   –Seth Fiegerman