Eastern alumnus David Busboom will be doing a book signing and reading of his newest book “Nightbird” at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Bob’s Bookstore.

The reading and book signing will mark the first time Busboom will read from “Nightbird,” and he said he is excited to do so.

“I’ve done a few readings in the past few years, but they’ve all been short stories,” Busboom said. “I’m going to read a chapter from ‘Nightbird’ and also a couple of short stories at this reading. I’m looking forward to that and seeing how this goes. Nightbird is a little more personal than a lot of my short fiction has been up to this point, so it’s a little nerve-wracking.”

During his time at Eastern Busboom minored in creative writing, and he said he believes Eastern helped him become more disciplined.

“(My time at Eastern) was certainly helpful,” Busboom said. “I don’t think I’d be where I am without Eastern.”

Busboom said his most rewarding moment as an author was a toss-up between seeing his first story in print and seeing his first book in print.

“You get a little more notice from a book than you do from a short story,” Busboom said. “The first short story was still the first fiction that I’d ever had published, and that was kind of that proof that I could do it.”

As for advice for aspiring authors, Busboom said most important was to not take a break after one work gets published.

“After I sold my first story I kind of thought it was going to open all these gates for me and I could just kind of sit back and rest on my laurels for a bit,” Busboom said. “I didn’t really work very hard on anything for a year or so, and then when I decided after about a year that I wanted to get back into it, it took that much longer to get back in the rhythm and start producing work again.”

More advice Busboom had to offer included sticking with it, not fearing criticism and reading as much as possible.

Busboom said he chose to do the reading the weekend before Halloween on purpose.

“Without sounding too mercenary about it, I’m hoping they’ll take away a copy of the book,” Busboom said. “I just hope they enjoy it … Hopefully it’ll be an appropriate event.”

Joe Judd, co-owner of Bob’s Bookstore with his wife Lisa, said he is looking forward to the reading and book signing as well.

“(Busboom’s) new book is pretty good,” Judd said.

According to Judd, events such as the reading and book signing always have good attendance.

“I just started telling people,” Judd said. “People always come up. We always have a lot of room.”

Judd said one nice thing the store does for events such as the book signing and reading is that the bookstore does not take a percentage of the profits from any books the author sells.

“We have a used bookstore which means that all these books that we have, that we’ve sold, the authors never actually got anything for them,” Judd said. “We’ve been making a living for so long that the least we could do is, given the chance, give authors money.”

Mercury Bowen can be reached at 581-2812 or mjbowen@eiu.edu.