It’s been a while! Because you’re reading this on a brand new website! The format will look familiar (read: the same), but all the content has been moved to a new website host. And there was a LOT of content. So here’s a quick rundown on some highlights of the last 3 months:

I've done many an author event in my day, various festivals or community nights where markets or bookstores feature a group of authors for an afternoon, an evening, a couple hours here or there. These events see the authors setting up tables with flyers, bookmarks, and, of course, books to sell. I immediately loved them when I started 10 years ago, because they made me feel so official. Like a real author. Over time they got harder, mostly because I started to learn how difficult it is to sell books. Picture readers perusing a parking lot full of author tables, where they mull over everything from poetry to mystery to romance to self-help to literary novel to historical non-fiction to delightful everyman memoir. With such selection (and with every reader coming into such events with his or her own specific genre preferences), I can tell you that the odds of these readers selecting YOUR book to purchase are low. So I got used to ending these events having sold almost no books. (In some cases, selling actually no books.) In short, it started to feel discouraging.

This was part of my display at Friday night's ArtNight Pasadena, an event I've now attended for the second straight year. Part of me wonders why I went back. Not that it isn't a GREAT event, but it's just such a big event.

This store hosts a Northwest authors fair each summer, and for years I've been trying to get in. Nevermind that I no longer live in the Northwest. Nevermind that I spend much more getting to author fairs than I make in book sales from them.

For those waiting on the results of my candy experiment, having a big bowl of chocolate at my table did draw in a record number of visitors. Indeed many other authors at last weekend's Pasadena ArtNight commented to me on how popular my candy was. Not that it really sold me any more books. People just wanted some candy. Jerks.

I'm getting ready for an author fair next week. I love author fairs. Book events of any kind, really. It's nice to be reminded you're an author, especially when just a lowly one like me. Because sometimes I forget. Sometimes I feel discouraged and wonder why I do it. But an author event can bring me back to myself...my writerly self.

Not sure there's any other word to describe being at an author fair selling your new book about jewelry and having the author to your right be--get this--a jeweler.

I promised I'd remind you again, so here it is. You are officially invited, Cleveland.

Summer festivals that involve book events are just about my favorite thing as an author. It gets you out in the community, you get to spend time with other local authors, and the festival environment means there's lots of traffic.

This is just to say that I so enjoyed participating in the Mayfield Library's author fair yesterday. I was so impressed by the turnout...most people who stopped by my booth mentioned they had a hard time finding parking.