Craft Show Confidential is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the American craft show industry, delivered as the fictional memoir of Vanessa Nathaniel, a beadwork jeweler based in the Chicago area. Nathaniel is writing in the year 2036, when craft shows, like dinosaurs, have vanished from the earth, victims of e-commerce and audience fatigue. Now 76, she recalls the 27 years she spent on the road as a hard-working single woman. Nathaniel's life unfolds in three places: the studio, the booth, and the road to and from. In each she undergoes eye-opening experiences, which reveal human nature for better and worse. In Volume 1,"The Typewriter Age: 1988-1996,"she tells her tale in 30 vignettes, most of them humorous, some even satirical, with titles such as: "Living on Fumes," "Humping Wholesale," "My Little Mohawk," "Drive-by Ex-Boyfriend," "Problem in a Porta-Potty," Artistic Leech, Artistic License." Along the way, the larger world changes. Presidents morph from Reagan to Clinton. Technology races from typewriter to computer. E-mails and websites are new and strange things. America launches the Persian Gulf War, a short-term effort to evict Iraq from Kuwait. The dot.com bubble begins to expand. Global warming is not yet a pressing concern. Nathaniel's "femoir" reveals how relate to these events. But the tone remains light; the reading is easy. Volumes 2 and 3, which cover the years 1997 to 2014, will be published in the Fall of 2014.