That’s an apt description of my last week.

It began auspiciously enough, with the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series, making me a four-time inhabitant of a city where the home team won such an honor on my watch (for the curious, Toronto in 1993, Boston in 2004, Chicago White Sox in 2005, and now here in San Francisco in 2010).

The euphoria was short-lived for me, as I found myself battling a touch of the flu as Election Day came looming the next morning. Nevertheless, I hauled myself over to my neighborhood polling place and voted for the second time ever in a U.S. election and the first time in person — during the last election two years ago I faxed my vote in from an Internet cafe in Vienna, and watched the returns roll in from a sports bar in Prague.

Nothing so exciting for me this time around, as the flu kept me home and put the kibosh on a planned party I was going to host. Instead, I rested up in preparation for my big event — the last Wander the Rainbow appearance of the year at Pegasus Books in Berkeley.

The best laid plans…

I’d promoted the event extensively, with postcards and posters in and around the Castro and downtown Berkeley. I’d reached out to LGBT campus groups, all of whom seemed most interested and receptive. I posted it on event calendars and contacted local media. For this event, I even opted to try something a bit different: offering prize giveaways — a Wander the Rainbow T-shirt, a matching mug, and a premium membership by my sometime sponsor and partner in crime, gay.com. On my Facebook invite a bunch of people who’d never heard me before RSVP’d in the affirmative. It all looked promising.

Arriving a bit early, as I typically do, I found the store pretty much deserted; a smattering of patrons browsing and row upon row of empty seats in their mezzanine where they hold events. OK, no surprise there. A few friends and acquaintances showed up as event time rolled around, but aside from them and one or two others… well, we gave it a bit more time. Five minutes, ten, fifteen…

Where is everybody?

It’s the fear that haunts every author or event planner: what if you host an event and nobody shows up? Although the friends who came out still managed to make the event lively and fun — and the prize giveaways were a definite hit — this was nevertheless a decidedly humbling evening after several successful or (in the case of the launch) jam-packed events with sell-out sales for Wander the Rainbow. Alas, it looks like I’m not alone: mystery author Parnell Hall had the presence of mind (and sense of humor) to cook up this hilarious YouTube ditty about his similar experience in book-event-land.

Happily, the week ended on an up note: a couple of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers who’ve been greatly enjoying the book did a lot to lift my spirits and make me feel this whole publishing adventure hasn’t been a fool’s errand. Then, to cap it all off, I jaunted down to L.A. for a quick overnight to catch my brother-in-law — indie producer, actor and writer Joseph McKelheer — hosting a launch of his own, the premier of Hamill at the prestigious AFIFest.

Joe and his team have been working on Hamill for five years (longer than the timespan of my liver donation, round-the-world trip, book writing and release for WTR combined), and the results have paid off: it’s a beautiful, uplifting story of Matt Hamill, the first-ever deaf UFC fighter and three-time NCAA champ. More than just a Rocky for deaf people, the movie manages emotion without undue sentimentality, a broad biopic sweep without epic length.

Perhaps ending the week this way serves as reminder to those of us flogging our creative wares: it’s a slow process, beset with triumphs and setbacks. But we do it, ultimately, to communicate, to share those stories we find meaningful (ours and others) with the world… and have them elicit the same feelings of hope, struggle, and human drama in others that they had for us.

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