From the other side of the desk
 April 24, 2007Book festivals are a familiar ritual in the lives of most writers. I receive several invitations a year and there are a few that I attend annually. They’re usually scheduled over a weekend and often between April and October in order to take advantage of decent weather. I’ll confess up front: book fairs are a guilty pleasure of mine. Why? As a participant, you may be asked to participate in a panel discussion about . . . books. You’ll meet and chat with readers about . . . books. And, you’ll have the opportunity meet writers and talk about writing and reading . . . books. To top it off, booksellers are co-sponsors of most of these events and that means that you get to buy . . . BOOKS! For a writer, book festivals are a lot like Cookie Monster taking a tour of a cookie factory. So many books, so little time (never enough money)!
My experience at this year’s Southern Kentucky Book Fest in Bowling Green, Kentucky (one hour north of Nashville) was no exception. It was eighty degrees and the sun was shining. It was, as Rick Bragg, one of the attendees wrote in Ava’s Man, “a blue-bird day.”
I shared table space with a delightful duo, former Courier Journal writer Beverly Bartlett (Cover Girl Confidential) and New York Times best-selling writer Teresa Medeiros. Over the course of the day, we swapped stories, shared ideas about blogs, plots, reader preferences and chocolate. And we met readers of all stripes: I chatted with a group of librarians who were supportive of my work; several readers whom I met last year stopped by to pick up Girls Most Likely and a delightful and intrepid woman who is penning her memoirs, some of which was written in solitude in Nova Scotia where she vacationed -- alone. Should she decide to publish them, I want the first copy.
Writers are readers first. I probably spent more time cruising the book-filled aisles than I should have. (Please don’t mention this to the organizers, they might not invite me back!) However, I am unapologetic. Robert Hicks (The Widow of the South) and I chatted about Victorian architecture in northern Kentucky. I asked Charles Shields, who’s written Mockingbird, a biography about To Kill A Mockingbird author Harper Lee, if his subject gave him any cooperation. The answer was “No.” And I was thrilled to meet one of my favorite writers, Barbara Robinette Moss (Change Me into Zeus’s Daughter, Fierce). She generously shared her recent screen-writing experience with me -- I was all ears. It is satisfying to meet and learn from artists of this caliber. Barbara reinforced what I’ve had the job of discovering in this career: while writers are like most folks, some are great and kind, others are inconsiderate twits, most are patient, generous and normal. They take out the trash, walk the dog and do laundry. My writer friends from across this country: the amazing Lynn, Lori, Jack and Ron -- are treasures.
We left the festival at three o’clock after two visits to the check-out table, carrying two heavy sacks of books. My dear husband (AKA “Entourage I”) asked wearily, “Do you think you have enough books?”
As the character says in the commercial, the answer’s always “no.” |
