L to R: Paula Benson, Margaret Maron, me, Tatjani Soli |
Some weekends are just more fun than other weekends. Last weekend was one of those fun kind for me. First I was in Columbia at the SC Book Festival which is one of the most writer friendly festivals I’ve had the pleasure of being invited to attend. This is my second time to attend, but what I like so much about it is that at this festival I get to go listen to the other writers’ presentations.
This year I got to hear Roy Blount Jr. talk about his Alphabet books. Fun. Of course I listen to Roy almost every Sunday after church on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” a radio program. We were on the same shuttle bus the first night we were there and while I didn’t recognize his face, I did his voice. But I also got to hear lots of other writers on panels along with the fun of getting to know them as we shared tables at the dinners and snack times. I was on a panel with Christian writers, Dale Cramer and Nicole Seitz on Saturday and with bestselling writers, Margaret Maron (The Bootlegger’s Daughter) and Tatjana Soli (The Lotus Eaters). We were an interesting threesome since we wrote different sorts of fiction, but I think that made the panel even more interesting as we each brought something different to the panel discussion led by the very personable and bookloving Paula Benson. It was the last program of the day so we didn’t have a big crowd but we talked books – how we write, why we write, and what we write
But on Saturday I also had the fun of talking by phone to a great book club in Georgia. And they