Where I Am Today

I'm off to the Connecticut Library Association. I'm co-presenting about how to host author visits. I've got the library portion and Karen from my favorite bookstore RJ Julia's will be talking about the book store perspective. 

I've talked about several author visits on my blog and I'm lucky to have hosted so many great ones. Just looking at all the pictures brings back so many memories. 

Tera Lynn Childs

Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Kim Harrington

Mysterious Saturday Spotlight: Lucy Burdette

This past week, I hosted an awesome event at the library: Cookies and Crime -with author Lucy Burdette. A group of teens and adults sat around in a circle and talked about writing, crime, and of course food. I had been to one of her release day parties at R.J. Julia's and it was fabulous - so I knew it was going to be a great night.

Lucy introduced her book series - including those under her real name: Roberta Isleib. She got started writing golf mysteries and she started playing golf because her husband liked the game. Her next series starred a clinical psychologist who wrote an advice column. As a psychologist  herself, Dr. Rebecca Butterman was closer in character to herself. Her current series features a young woman who makes her living as a food critic in Key West.

Writing about a food critic means that Roberta and her husband have try the local cuisine in Key West. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it!  Roberta adds the flavor of Key West into her books. She told us about several entertainers in Key West.

She also talked about how her pets made it into her books, how she raffles off names of characters for charity, and how she makes Pinterest boards for the feel of the book, which sometimes helps the cover designers.

Because her books come out every 9 months, her writing process changes daily in terms of word count. She divides the time she has with a rough estimate of 70,000 words. Then she creates a weekly word count. Writing also happens on the two blogs:  http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/ and http://www.jungleredwriters.com/
And or course there's time for cooking and baking for the recipes included in her books.

Then we talked food and cookies!

Some photos:

Once Lucy started talking, I forget to take more pictures. I really wanted one together...next time!

The Book Table: if you haven't picked up one of these, they're great books!

The Cookie Table

Close Up of the Cookies

Connecticut Author Trail: Sarah Darer Littman

We were lucky to have Sarah Darer Littman for our author this year.

She talked about her path to writing, how she always wanted to be a writer, but was told that writing wasn't a career option. She'd never make money with an English Major.

So, she majored in political science instead and worked on Wall Street for a bit. But she couldn't have been further from her real self.

She lived in rural England for 10 years, but then came back to the States. She wanted to challenge herself to do the things she always wanted to do (which she says is her midlife crisis).

At 38, Sarah decided it was time to start writing so she wouldn't have any regrets. She took some writing classes and went on a writer's retreat. In a workshop lead by Paula Danziger, she found herself answering the question what does your character have hidden in your closet - with faith. Growing up Sarah felt like she had mixed messages from her parents on religion - how to be Jewish without being too Jewish.

She started writing her first book and then her second. But she was told that she didn't have a YA voice. The things she wanted to talk about were clearly YA, so Sarah fought back. She stopped showing her work until the book was complete.

She came up with the idea for Purge after looking at a picture of her younger self and a voice appeared in her head about body image. Body image is a universal struggle, but a really important one for teen girls.

In w writing workshop with teens, a mother asked her if she'd consider writing a book about 9/11. Life, After became that book.

Want to Go Private? came out of a fan mail letter from Germany and a talk for her son at school by an FBI agent about internet safety. After talking more to the agent, she realized how important this topic was and how a girl could have feelings for an online predator.  She worked with the FBI and the police department on the getting the haunting details just right. Working on this book made it hard to sleep as the real life tales were so heartbreaking.

Then we chatted over dessert:

Some cookies and chocolate bars

Sarah's the author of these really great books:

Plus, she just announced on twitter her upcoming book:

Sounds great right? If you haven't picked up her books yet, I urge you to do so.

Author Visit: Kim Harrington

I was lucky enough to get the fabulously funny Kim Harrington to appear for our Teen Summer Reading Kick-off Program.

Here's the book table with all her fabulous books:

And the goodies table, because it's not an author visit without dessert

Kim talked about how she got ideas for her books and how she has an idea notebook now. She talked about characters - and now Clare might be her favorite because she wished that she always had a snarky comeback when she was being bullied, instead of walking away.

Kim shared foreign covers with her. Some are great and some are very strange, not making a whole lot of sense to me. Here's the UK copy -which looks awesome! The model on the cover has major attitude!

Kim talked about her middle grade trilogy, which is super cute. The two main girls are super nerdy and super proud of it, which is great. Kim, herself, is a HUGE Star Wars fan.  I'm loving the nerdy girl trend.

All in all, it was an evening full of bookish talk, lots of laughter, and left several readers eager to read more of Kim's work. Really, it was perfect.

And here are the two if us together - Don't you LOVE Kim's shirt? I do!

 

Kim was gracious enough to pose for a READ poster for the library. Here's what I came up with! Do you like it?

Fins Are Forever Week!

Tomorrow is the release date for...
Tonight it also the BIG author event with Tera at the Otis Library. I'm SUPER excited to meet Tera and for the event!!!

I'm working on decorating the room and putting out the cupcakes:


If you want to know how awesome the book is, I gush about it here.

Plus you can watch the book trailer I made here:

If you're in the area, come meet Tera tonight!!!! It's going to be an awesome event. There will be prizes!

Did you see those cupcakes?!

If you can't make it, I'll spill all the secrets I learned and post a bunch of pictures tomorrow :)

Ghost and Graves Tour: Otis Library recap

The treat table

Goodies that Nancy from Cataloging made for the event

Gravestone cookies I made

Fun Candelabras

The book table

giving out the awesome prizes

Chatting with many teens and adults

Jessica Verday and Michelle Zink visited the library on Monday night. As you can see in addition to their great books, we had great treats. The authors chatted about their books.

The Hollow (read my review)

The Haunted (I have this one on hold)

3rd book coming next year: Title is NOT the Horror which is listed on Goodreads and it's about choices

Jessica talked about her perfume making - which you can read about in her books. She also made the character's perfumes which is awesome. She mentioned reading the latest Joe Hill novel (who is Stephen King's son). She talked about researching religion and how there's at least one common thread throughout the burial process.

Prophecy of the Sisters (read my review)

Guardian of the Gate (Read my review)

3rd book coming next year: Circle of Fire

Michelle mentioned combining mythologies in her book - Celtic, Norse, and others. She mentioned loving Stephen King and horror. She spoke about not reading while she writes so the voices don't combine and so she won't lose her muse. However, after the book is complete the reading begins.

Here's Jessica (From I Read to Relax) and I posing with the authors

And the awesome READ poster: