The event last night was one of those rare occasions when readers and writers have a chance to get together to share their love of stories while munching on cookies, sipping cold drinks and winning prizes.
Julianne Wernersbach (first photo,) our host from Book Revue, kicked the evening off with some words about beach reads and shared her enthusiasm for the theme of the night and for the authors sharing their debut novels.
Tess Callahan (second photo) began her talk by recommending On Chesil beach by Ian McEwan and talked a little bit about the origin of stories and how the discovery of objects, like a
shoe from a ship unearthed at the world trade center site is one of those moments of magic that be the beginnings of a story. Tess read a scene from her novel April & Oliver between April and her grandmother .
Hyatt Bass (third photo) followed Tess with a beach read recommendation of Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Hyatt read two scenes from her novel The Embers, featuring a great twelve year old voice.
I brought up the rear with comments about what a summer read meant
to me, including memories of being caught crying after I finished To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time so many years ago. When my brother asked if I was crying because it was sad I said I was crying because it was over. I read one of my favorite scenes from The Last Bridge, where Cat goes to the neighbor's house for dinner.
We raffled off some great prizes which included, two $25 gift cards from the great wine store Bottles and Cases and a beach bag of goodies including wine, treats, beach towel, and three signed novels of RITA award winning author (and good friend) Gwyn Cready.
A lively discussion followed spurred by great questions from the crowd and then Tess, Hyatt and I signed books next to a grab bag box of books for anyone who purchased one of our novels.
There is nothing better than being in a book store like Book Revue where everywhere you turn you see books. Last night was even better, as in addition to being enveloped by books, we were talking about them, sharing our favorites, and signing our own! No one left empty handed!
Tess, Hyatt and I agreed that as far as author events go, the more authors the merrier. In addition to having the chance to share our stories, we loved having the chance to compare our experiences and give readers different perspectives.
I wish I had more pictures to share but as you can tell I was caught up in the moment!
For those of you that could not be with us check out some of these links and for those of you in book clubs why not consider having a similar theme event? It was great fun.
Links of interest:
Book Revue (aside from a great bookstore they have great author events!)
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (on the front table at Book Revue!)
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