Past & Future & New Learning

The East Texas Book Fest last weekend was lots of fun. My friend and fellow author Jerrie Alexander and I drove together, giving us plenty of time to chat and catch up. Her husband brought her to the Wallgreens, which has been a meeting place for us since the days when we were critique partners with another writer and met weekly to share twenty pages of our WIPs. Over the years we’ve traveled to many writing conferences together. Hanging out with Jerrie made the weekend a blast regardless of anything else.

Big room, lots of folks

We met up with several other members of our writing chapter. Thanks Chrissy Szarek for putting us on to the Book Fest. It was fun to catch up with D’Ann Burrow, who’s moved just north of San Antonio and can’t make it to our chapter meetings. The group met for supper after getting set up Friday evening for the Fest on Saturday. Also included were Susie Sheehey, JoAnna Grace, Kimberly Packard, and Cheryl Letsch.

Kimberly Packard

I didn’t finish setting up on Friday. After I got my poster set up, I decided I needed something to go on my table. It had a white plastic tablecloth, but I needed a bit of pizzazz. I also hadn’t brought my little easels I used before I had “real” books, because I have “real” books now and thought I wouldn’t need them, but yes, I did. So before the reception Friday evening, Jerrie and I navigated to Big Lots and Michaels. We were trying for a Walmart, but found the other two first. We’d have really been lost without Siri on our phones. (Thanks, Jerrie, for introducing me to her and getting her set up on my phone.)

I found three easels at Michaels and then a gorgeous turquoise (my signature color) curtain at Big Lots. Was so happy. We then located our hotel, checked in, unpacked, and changed clothes before heading back. Lovely reception at the Harvey Convention Center. The catered food was on the lite side, but scrumptious. In fact, it was so good we wanted to eat at their restaurant, but they just cater. Disappointing for sure. Loved the decorations. A group takes old books and creates new things from them. Pictures and containers as two examples.

Table decorations at the Friday reception made from old books!

We headed to Chuy’s at the request of one of the group, but with a 45 minute wait and it being already 7:15, I was not as fan. We found something called the Salado Grill, (I may have that wrong, but “Grill” was definitely a part of the name.) just around the corner. Awesome food—everyone (but me) had pasta that was scrumptious based on their remarks. I ate a salmon salad that was delicious.

D’Ann Burrow

Back at the motel, we read for a while and then crashed pretty early. Good thing because we were up and at’em early on Saturday morning. After a quick complimentary breakfast at the motel, we drove to the convention center. I had plenty of time to set up my table. Shook many hands, handed out lots (more than 50) of each of my Bitty Booklets, and sold and gave away several of my books. As far as I could tell nobody sold a lot of books, but we made lots of contacts. So more than a book selling event, it was a marketing event. Important to do and I’ll go back next year if the date works for me. We returned Saturday evening. I was home by 8:30, exhausted, but happy.

On the Future Part of this post. Last week, I mentioned that I had become a member of a new blog group, Sisters of Suspense. I learned about blogging from visiting a few blogs that had several authors as members. I thought it was so cool they had the relationship they did and always wanted to be a part of one. So I’m super excited to a part of Sisters of Suspense. (Writing is something of a solitary endeavor.)

Here’s where the new learning comes in. Gosh we’ve been moving fast. (I had over 400 emails from this group when I got to looking at them on Monday morning after being gone.) While my blog is a Word Press blog, and I’ve been blogging here and other places for almost three years, still things are different. There are 17 of us and all of us have opinions on everything from what the banner should look like to how many people we should have on the blog to contests to book bundles…well to everything. LOL I love that we’re such a democratic group. Jo-Ann Carson had the great idea to put us together, and we’re all grateful to her, but it’s been a joint effort to bring it to fruition. I’m sure it will continue to morph and grow. Just hope I can keep up.  

I wrote the “ABOUT” section of the site ably assisted by Jacquie Bigger and Sam ­­­­­Bradley and Jacqui Nelson. Everyone has jumped into volunteer somewhere. Lots of technology thingies: posting the Hot Lines on Sunday, keeping up with a volunteer list, handling a newsletter, and on and on. Not my strong suit, as we all know.

Kathryn Jane volunteered to check out people’s posts before we push SEND. (Thanks for looking at my Friday SOS post, Kathryn.) I realized, I could do that too. Oh, everyone who knows me, knows I can’t spell worth a fig, but I can spot grammar errors or odd incongruities, and I do know how to run the spell and grammar check on my computer. LOL Besides, mostly you just need a second set of eyes to see the stuff you can’t catch in your own writing.

Here’s the link. ­­http://sistersofsuspense.com/ I hope you will pop on over there and follow so you’ll get all the updates as they come out on blog posts, contests, newsletters, cover reveals, & book releases. The September contest is huge! Tell your friends, especially those who love romantic suspense. You’ll see a few other kinds of books on the blog. All of the Sisters are not strictly suspense writers, but we agreed to promo everyone’s work regardless of what the genre because we’re family. I like that. As I said, my first blog post is tomorrow. Look for reminders on FB and Twitter.

So here’s my question for you. Do you prefer one genre over another. Are you into cozies, but not so much straight mysteries? Do you like fantasy/SciFi? What about thriller? (I differentiate these from romantic suspense because a thriller may not have any romance and it’s certainly not half the story line.) What about women’s fiction? Do you read more than one book at a time?

As always, I’d love to hear from you.

Weight Update: Gained two pounds over the weekend, but I’d lost 4.5 pounds the first week back on Nutrisystem, so I still have a net loss. A bit harder to get back on the wagon. I think I need not to indulge quite so much on the weekends so Monday’s are not so hard.