3 Authors and 2 Owners

It was an interesting weekend. SCBWI hosted a literary festival this weekend. Basically it meant that three authors came to town. One was from Utah, she published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, another from Reno, Nevada, she published with an imprint of Simon and Schuster, and the last was from Portland and she published with Random House. Jim Thomas is her editor. I only mention this because I know him. At least I shook his hand and sat by him for twenty minutes during a question/answer session. But I got a good feel for what he likes in a book. Interesting guy.

Then, if things could get better, I was invited to do a book launch with Rediscovered Bookshop. She is the nicest. The party is scheduled June 26 from 7-8:30. It's going to be great!

Last Friday I met the owner of A Novel Adventure in downtown Boise. He's excited about carrying my book too. I'm hoping to do something on a Saturday morning during Farmers Market at the end of May. I'll keep you posted.

But, back to the authors. On Friday night they had this little gathering where we could get to know everyone. Only two of the three authors were there that night, but it was fun. But on Saturday, all three authors were at Rediscovered Bookshop where we were holding our writers group meeting in honor of the Literary Festival. We usually do it at someone's house.

The three authors sat themselves down at our little meeting and talked and answered questions for an hour. An HOUR!!! Okay, I'll admit. The reason I was so excited about this was because I was the one asking ALL the questions. Yeap. I had three big house published authors to shoot questions at for an hour. And I got a lot of answers that I have spent hours looking for and not finding on the internet. It was awesome. Completely amazing. Such a blessing. The fact that there were three of them meant that I could ask them their opinions on the same subject to get a feel for what "normal" was.

They were so generous with their time and open and honest with their answers that it was like getting a hundred dollar week-long workshop in one little evening, but relaxed, easy and casual. There are so many things I feel like I can get out there and do now, because they told me how.

If there is one thing I can say about authors in general, the more of them I meet, the more I think that they are overall - a really friendly group of people. Not snobbish. You would think, especially with the big house or Times News bestsellers- but not so. For some reason they don't have a big head. Maybe writing is so dang gruelling that it keeps most people from getting too full of themselves. It's a hard job. Time consuming, and if they're anything like me, they need all the inspiration they can get.