An Eventful Weekend

Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. I hope everyone is well and had a great weekend.

If you didn't hear from me on Twitter for #WW or #FF and haven't seen the familiar flame avatar on your blog in a while, I assure you that I am alive and well. I have just been treading water over here...

In my day job, we have been so busy. I have been working 11 hour hectic days. The kind of days where you want to slam your company-issued cell phone into the nearest wall, due to the volume of calls that you end up taking. You don't, of course. But you really, really want to. *sigh*

On top of this I had my first events as an author, and the build-up and preparation for these were taking all of my time. In fact, I didn't touch my trusty lap top for 48 hours between Thursday and Saturday night. It must be some sort of record!!

The first event was Thursday evening at a library in Fresno, California which is about 25 minutes north of me. I joined authors Lorie Ham and Marilyn Meredith. The three of us also write articles for Lorie's Kings River Life Magazine. Each of us spoke a bit about ourselves and then read a bit from our novels. We had about eleven guests attend, which was way more than I thought we might get. They were an enthusiastic crowd and asked some good questions. I had fun interacting with them and felt that it was a positive first experience.

Friday afternoon I checked in for the Kingsburg Swedish Festival. It is my hometown's big event for the year, and an event that I attended as a child. Now I was a vendor. I was given the spot directly in front of the local branch of the Fresno County Library. I met new people and surprised local friends that had no idea that I was a writer.

Now there is special significance for those who have yet to read my novel. The plot takes place in my hometown and occurs 10 days before the Swedish Festival in 2008. So perhaps now you can see why I have said that if I can't sell a book about vampires in my town, then I might not be able to sell it at all. Thankfully, it was a great event. I worried that I would speak to few and sell fewer still. However, armed with 43 copies of my book, Dance on Fire, I now only have 11 remaining.

After spending a year building a web presence, followed by attacking newspapers and magazines and now followed by holding author events, I feel confident that there is enough there to continue on. Had this weekend bombed, I would have felt compelled to back down.

Thanks so much to all of you who have encouraged me to continue chasing the dream. I hope you are doing the same, and that my progress encourages you in return. In other news, I just mailed my contract for Dance on Fire: Flashpoint. I am anxiously awaiting my edits to arrive so that book 2 will see physical and virtual bookshelves everywhere.

We'll talk soon.