Book Festivals and Birthdays

It's a great thing to be two and have a cake that matches your dress and to blow out candles and hear everybody cheer. That has to be a great thing! And I get to help another granddaughter celebrate a birthday this weekend. I'm one blessed grandmother.

 ~~ It was a busy Saturday with birthday parties and the Redbud Festival. I always enjoy going to Barbourville and sitting on Writers' Row with so many friend writers. But the writers aren't the only creative people at the festival. There are craftsmen and women of all kinds. Dulcimer makers and players. Wood carvers. Gourd decorators. Jewelry makers. Somebody there was even making marshmallow shooters. I figured I'd be in big trouble if I got those for my grandkids. Marshmallows everywhere. Besides I always want to get the books. So many great books to entice me. But one of the highlights of the Redbud Festival is the quilts. Artists with needles. I didn't get the name of the artist below, but she had created some beautiful quilts. She told me the name of the pattern of the one on top in the middle. "Hearts and blooms." So pretty. So perfect.

 ~~ I know about quilting. When I was a little girl, my aunt made a quilt every winter. She'd set up the quilting frame in the living room by the coal burning stove and spend hours making perfect stitches. She let me make a few passes with the needle, but I'm sure she picked out my awkward stitches after I went home and did them over. I have a quilt she made for me the year I was born. I treasure it.

~~ I've never made a quilt and if I did it would just be pieces of cloth sewn in squares - on a sewing machine. Nothing to compare to the artwork you see here. Of course they do have machines that quilt now. I don't know if this lady used one of those or not, but just seeing her quilts hanging made my day at the Redbud Festival more fun.

 ~~ Spring is a busy time for book festivals. I'm going to be at Southern Kentucky Book Fest in Bowling Green this weekend. They've got an impressive line-up of authors. Judith Viorst, author of many popular kids' books. Nicholas Sparks of Notebook fame. Jean Auel who wrote those Clan of the Cave Bear books. And I'm looking forward to seeing T.J. Stiles who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book The First Tycoon about Cornelius Vanderbilt. That might be a great birthday gift for somebody. It's fun having family members who love books the way I do. Of course I have a birthday every year too. Then besides the headliners, I'll get to see writer friends. We'll get to talk about deadlines and rewrites and editing and new releases. And on top of all that fun, I generally get some reading friends who stop by my table to say hello. That's the best part of all. So if you're in the Southern Kentucky area on Saturday, come by and say hello and make me smile.

 ~~ If you were organizing a book festival, what famous writer would you want to be there? And what question would you ask him or her?

People Watching at Book Fests

~~Here I am with my table sharers at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest, Jan Watson (Sweetwater Run) and Virginia Smith (Third Time's Charm). I'm in the middle with Jan on the left and Ginny on the right. See us smile. That's what you do when you go to a Book Festival. You smile and smile and smile some more. Mostly because we want to. We like talking to readers and we hope if we smile readers will like talking to us. And then of course sometimes we're smiling because a reading friend we made the year before comes back to our table to buy another book since she enjoyed the first read so much. The Christian market was well represented at the Book Fest with not only us but also Eric Wilson (Fireproof), Patti Lacy (What the Bayou Saw), and Travis Thrasher (Ghostwriter) and others.

~~Around one hundred fifty authors were at the Book Fest with all sorts of fiction and nonfiction books. You could find mysteries, romances, young adult books, histories, memoirs, cook books, picture books, and poetry collections. That's one of the fun things about going to a book fair - seeing the variety of books. And authors. The same as books, authors come in all sizes, styles and attitudes. Some authors smile and try to engage the readers with conversation or entice them to their tables with chocolate. The cake doctor, Anne Byrne, even had cake for people to eat along with plenty of napkins. Other writers sit quietly and wait for readers to approach them. Some writers desert their stacks of books to explore the other aisles of books. A few writers spend the time reading or writing notes. Some even bring editing work. Nearly all of us enjoy comparing writing stories with the writers sitting next to us.

~~Many of us admire with just a wee bit of envy the long lines that form for the more famous writers' autographs on their books. The longest lines this fair were for Laura Numeroff who wrote If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and for mystery writer, Lisa Scottoline. Actually it was fun seeing all the kids clutching books that had been signed especially to them. Their parents and grandparents were giving them a great gift helping them along the road to a life long love of reading.

~~Of course the readers on the other side of the tables come in all shapes and sizes and reading tastes too. I met a woman long haul truck driver pushing her grandson in a stroller and a retired doctor who used to go to church with Julia Neal. Neal wrote one of the Shaker books I use in my research. I met a little girl of about seven or eight who had written and illustrated her own little picture book and with mom's help had it published. I met a couple of young women who were writers - as yet unpublished but working toward that goal. I met school teachers and librarians and other book lovers. I remembered some faces from previous book fests who come every year to go fishing for a few good books to read. People who connect with books are easy to talk to and that makes a writer like me smile.

~~Hope you have a lovely week ahead and that sometime in the weeks and months ahead you'll have the opportunity to go book fishing at a book festival near you. Or if you're a writer that you'll get a chance to try to catch some new readers. Your best bait is a great book. And a smile.

A Writer's Best Time

~~Here I am with fellow writers, Allie Pleiter and Ginny Smith practicing our smiles before the Southern Kentucky Book Fest last April. We'll be practicing again this Friday as we get ready to sign books for readers coming up Saturday. The Southern Kentucky Book Fest is always a fun event with a lot of writers and readers getting the chance to talk. The Book Fest has panels and speakers all day to give readers a chance to learn more about how the books they enjoy came into being. I'm on a panel at 2 p.m. called "Travel in Time" featuring historical fiction writers. Other authors on the panel with me are Mary Calhoun Brown, Roger Brucker, Brigid Pasulka, and Patti Lacy. Ginny and Allie are on a panel at 1 p.m. called "Valentines in April" along with Jan Watson, Teresa Medeiros and Trish Milburn. We'll all have fun answering questions and talking about our books. Of course you can come right up to our signing tables for one on one talk. The Book Fest is at the WKU Carroll Knicely Conference Center in Bowling Green, KY April 17 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (CST) If you've got kids, you can bring them out to meet Laura Numeroff, the author of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."

~~This has been a busy week for me. Monday I was in WV for the Ohio River Festival of Books and while I was there I talked to three groups of kids at my grandkids' school. My seven-year-old granddaughter was so excited to have grandma at her school. She was better than a cockerspaniel puppy at making me feel loved. She's a sweetheart. To her class I wasn't Ann Gabhart. I was "Ashley's grandma." Her first grade class and the kindergarten class combined to listen and all the kids sat quietly and listened before eagerly asking questions. The same was true for the 2nd through 6th grade students later in the day. For me, the best part of visiting schools is always the kids' questions. One of their favorites, asked several times, was what was the longest book I ever wrote. Of course I didn't really know. I just said 375 pages. That might be close.

~~Then one of the older kids asked "What is the best moment you feel as a writer?" You know that's a great question and one I wasn't quick to answer. My first answer was the moment when you first hold that published book in your hands and open it up to see the printed words. That's a good feeling for sure. Then I thought maybe it's when I write "The End" after seeing my characters through their story. But what about when that needed extra character just sort of appears out of nowhere to make your story work? And don't forget those moments when a reader tells you he/she couldn't put your book down and sat up to the wee hours of the morn to find out what happened or that something you wrote brought tears to his eyes or made her smile. So if you're a writer, what is the best moment you feel as a writer? I think I might still have to go with the holding the printed book in my hands and knowing all that other has happened or may be going to happen.

~~So I loved the questions the kids asked and I wished I'd thought to take my camera in to snap a picture of their bright, eager faces to share with you. But instead I'll just have to share the picture in words. Just imagine two hundred or so kids waving their arms in the air to try to get their question answered. I could have answered questions until the cows came home.

~~If you're in the Bowling Green area Saturday, come out to the Book Fest and please stop by my table to say hello. And ask a question if you want to. I won't even make you hold up your hand.

A Sunny Saturday at the Book Fest

It's rained buckets today in Kentucky but we had a beautiful spring day yesterday. Couldn't ask for a nicer day for a belated Easter egg hunt (some of my grandkids got to do that with their other grandmom) or a day to wet that fishing line or to take a walk down the creek to feast your eyes on some newly bloomed wildflowers. That last might be my pick for such a welcome warm sunny day.

But it was also a good day to talk to some readers and writers and sign some of my books. That's always a favorite day for me and that's what I got to do at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest on Saturday. I told some of my fellow writers at the reception the night before that nobody would be at the Book Fest because they would all be home mowing their yards or planting flowers or still picking up limbs from the ice storm. All along the road down we saw piles and piles of limbs and trees where the road crews were cleaning the fallen branches out of the right-of-ways.

I'm glad to say I was wrong about the Book Fest and not everybody stayed home to mow his or her yard although one lady did tell me she couldn't come to my panel discussion because she had to get her yard mowed. Me, I've never worried that much about grass. You'd have no trouble believing that if you could see my yard now. I gave that chore over to Darrell when he retired and he mows on his own schedule. But even when I was doing more of the mowing, I would have picked a book fest over mowing any Saturday of the year. It is such a treat to be able to wander through rows and rows of authors all ready to talk to you and tell you about their books.

I've been on both sides of the table. I've been the wanderer wanting to buy every book in the place, and I've been the author hoping my book will catch a shopper's eye and he or she will want to stop and talk to me for a while. Even better maybe give my book a chance. Or best yet, maybe have already read some of my books and be anxious for the new one. I was fortunate enough to have several of those best yet readers come by my table this year. That's always fun.

One of the other most fun things besides meeting so many readers is meeting so many writers. I was in a great row of writers. On one side was Elizabeth Emerson Hancock with her memoir about growing up a preacher's kid called Trespassers Will Be Baptized. Titles that make people smile draw the browsers over to an author's table and so many of those browsers bought Elizabeth's book that she sold out before the Book Fest was over. Of course I bought one too and I think the inside is going to be a make-you-smile story too. The book got a starred review in Publishers' Weekly. Not always an easy accomplishment. So I'm looking forward to reading it.

On my other side was Patti Lacy with her first novel, An Irishwoman's Tale, based on a true story. This book is also getting great reader reviews on Amazon.com. I didn't buy it because, well, I couldn't buy all I wanted yesterday or I would have had to rent a truck to bring them home and then build a room to hold them. Oh, wait, I am building a room! But that's to hold all my grandbabies. Still a few extra books might fit in there somewhere. Patti's book looked and sounded very interesting and I'm sure I'll enjoy reading it when I do get it.

Then down the table was Leisha Kelly who publishes with Revell the same as I do. I came home with one of her signed books, Julia's Hope, that I'm going to use in one of my book give-aways. I'll announce what next Wednesday. Got to make up my mind. I bought several books to give away. Leisha and I were on the historical novel panel together and one way she researches for her novels is by going to nursing homes and talking with the people there. She says she wants to keep their stories alive. I did something the same with my book, Angel Sister, that Revell has scheduled to come out in January 2011 about the depression years because I used all the stories my mother and aunts told me about those years to get the feel of the era.

I was also on a panel for Inspirational Fiction for Women with some great writers: Patti Lacy, Virginia Smith, Angela Benson, and duo writers - Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant. We didn't have many people come to listen, but those who did got a treat. I did too as I enjoyed hearing about the other ladies' books and writing methods. I bought Angela Benson's The Amen Sisters, a gritty story of hope and strength that tells it like it is. That one will be in a give-away soon too. I already have my friend, Virginia Smith's book Age Before Beauty since I did an endorsement for it. That will probably be the first one I give away. All of us had a blast talking about our writing as we shared a lot of laughter. I made some new writing friends and reading friends. I wish I could go to a book fair every month. But if I don't stay home and do some writing I won't have any reason to go now, will I?

Baby Raegan is home from the hospital and doing well. So is Mom although it'll be a while before she's ready to run any races. Dad's staying home this week to take care of everybody. He's great with the kids and with the baby. As soon as I get a chance I'll get a picture of Raegan posted along with some updated pictures of the twin boys.

Tune in on Wednesday. Who knows what I'll talk about then! I'm sure I don't.