Friday, March 08, 2013

SinC Meeting Guest Speaker

We had our monthly Sisters in Crime meeting last night and I felt so wanted and popular when I walked in the door.  First, I had to make my usual greeting to Barbara Williams who has been spurring me on with Words With Friends games - we've been pretty good about having a new game going about once a week or so.  I also chatted with our guest speaker, Chris Roerden, who remembered me from my volunteer time at the SC Book Festival eons ago, and who said that she didn't have my email address or she would have kept in touch.  We talked about what I've done since the volunteer time.  While I was talking with Chris, Tony came in and asked if I had a minute to answer some questions.  I finally got my stuff put at my seat and was going to chat with my good friend, Faye Tollison, trying to get her to listen to the auditions for the audio book as well as some of the first 15 minutes but the sound on the tablet was very low so that didn't work.  On my way around the tables to chat with Faye, Chris introduced me to her tour manager, Pat Meller, and was talking about my state series.  At the mention of children's books, Pat immediately asked for contact information and said she would come over to my seat and get the information when I was finished chatting with Faye.  She asked me what I was doing to get the books in schools and at the moment I'm not really in the schools which is where I want to be; she also mentioned that her niece was a "literacy coach" in Northern Alabama and so she was interested in getting the information so that she could pass it on to her niece.  When we were leaving, everyone tried to get me to talk again - Tony, Phoebe, and Pat - unfortunately, I was riding with Anita and we had to pick her DIL up from the airport.  So I do apologize to those who needed my wisdom - lol - for not sticking around and chatting.

The topic of discussion was voice and some other things crept in there including some questions about POV.  It was interesting that the these two topics came up in conjunction with each other as the past week and a half, I've been teaching POV to Mr. Hughes' 6th graders.  I'm glad I didn't get to go to the SCASL conference, although I really would have loved to have been there since that is right into getting my books in the schools, but Chris's presentation was worth it.  She gave me some new writing related thoughts to share with the class.  I can't wait for Monday's class session to share a bit of what I learned last night.

If you are interested in having Chris speak to your group or hearing one of her presentations, click here to see what she has to offer and where she will be; you never know when she will be in yourr neck of the woods. 

Off topic -  Last Saturday was the spelling bee at our local county library and Tuesday when I was just looking at my createspace dashboard trying to figure out what I needed to order and when I noticed my royalty bar showing over $15 in royalties for March.  I was surprised since I haven't had very many amazon sales or other online sales since going the route of self-publishing.  I think I've had maybe 6 books total in 2+ years sold through amazon or createspace's expanded distribution and Monday, someone ordered one of each of the four state books from amazon, which was like the moset in one sitting from a not in-person sale.  So who knows - maybe this will be the year I start gaining some attention with my books.  We shall see - for now, see you in the postings - E :)

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