SRO for our Summer Reads Event at Book Revue!

Judging from the turnout at our Book Revue Beach Party last night, the only thing better than going to the beach is sharing your favorite reads with fellow readers.

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!)

April & Oliver by Tess Callahan

The Embers by Hyatt Bass

The Last Bridge by Teri Coyne

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (on the front table at Book Revue!)

Flirting with Forever (and other books) by Gwyn Cready

Giveaway Fever!

Who knew that giving away 25 Free copies of The Last Bridge would result in so many great stories from readers. Thanks to all of you who participated -- the stories of how you gave the books away were great!

And the winner is...

Laurie Morris was the lucky winner of the $100 Target Gift Card. She gave her free copy to her daughter as part of a beach bag of goodies for her trip to Florida to prep for her wedding. Congrats to Laurie and her daughter!

The lucky recipients

Based on your feedback, when presented with the chance to give a book away most of you will give it to a relative (8 of you did that) -- and if it's a relative chances are it will be a daughter (3.) The next most popular choices were friends (6), Co-workers (2), Book Club friends (2), Neighbors (2), Student (1) and my personal favorite a Stranger (1)

Reasons You Gave

The reasons you gave the book to your recipient were the best part of the giveaway. A number of you chose to give the book to someone who was struggling with an illness, or taking care of someone who was ill. In those instances you all cited the importance of reading to take your mind away from your troubles. (So True!)

A few of you also chose to give your books to daughters, sisters-in-law, nieces and even a few sons. How great it is to share books with another generation - one of the great joys of my own life is swapping books with my Mom, Sister and Brother.

Aside from working together a few of you enjoy sharing and discussing books with your co-workers. You gave your books to those colleagues.

One of the great categories of friendship is a "book friend" someone you swap and share books with -- a few of them were lucky recipients.

Book Groups also got their hands on a few of the giveaways as well.

My favorite giveaway was from a reader who was traveling regularly to a hospital to visit a sick relative - she left the copy in the family waiting area with a note to please take it, read it and share it!

Amazing adventures...

The most amazing part of the giveaway was hearing of all the places The Last Bridge has and will travel. It went on a cross country journey from Arizona to DC (with lots of stops along the way!) and made it on a European jaunt (Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands) and was sent to over 20 States and 40+ Cities. Check out the Google map I made of all the stops you told me about.

The real winner is...

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the wonderful notes I got sharing your feelings about the book and your enthusiasm for getting the word out about The Last Bridge. I appreciate the time you have taken to let me become of part of your world and for your honesty and kindness.

I am the true winner of this giveaway!

Philadelphia Stories

On Sunday my friend Stephanie joined me for the day at the Philadelphia Book Festival. While we were there to sell books and meet people, the best part of the day was having so many folks stop by and tell us their stories. I've recounted a few of the highlights of the day. I am grateful to everyone who stopped by and shared their stories with us.

Most Beautiful Kiss of my Life
An African American gentleman came by a took a handful of tootsie rolls declaring they were his favorite candy as a kid. Then he asked us if we ever lived in Israel, we said, "No." He asked me where I was from originally, I told him Pittsburgh.

He then told us a story of how he was in Pittsburgh years ago at a club called Disco 2000 where he met this woman. She was beautiful and they ended up back at his hotel room. When he wanted to see her again she told him it was just a one night stand as she had no intention of ever falling in love again. Another man broke her heart.

"Some people are like that," he said. "They can't take the heartbreak so they just want a one time thing. She was a beautiful kisser," he said. "The best kiss of my whole life."

He said as soon as the weather got warm he was going back to Pittsburgh and, "who knows?" he said, "maybe we'll all meet up there."

Come to my Party
I had to weigh down my handouts with bottles of water. A woman came over dressed in her church clothes, including a hat and was trying to get my information sheet. I told her why I was using the water bottles, she said, "I would have to be crazy to not understand that. I have lived in this city all my life and I know what kind of wind can come whipping up behind you and surprise, take everything on this table down. You don't have to explain to me."

She then went on to tell me about how much she loved books and the library and how having a place to go to read books saved her as a child. She took two of everything saying that was her policy, to always give what you find to someone else. Pass the good along.

She told us she planned on living to 125 and then shocked me when she said she was 67, the woman looked almost younger than me. She said as she walked away, "I'm going to do it and when I do I want you to come to my party. Everyone is going to be there."

Thank God, The Last Bridge!

A man who looked like a skinnier version of Santa Claus carrying books on computer programming and wearing a kelly green tattered sport jacket stopped at the beginning of the table and declared, "Thank God, The Last Bridge. We have way too many of them to begin with - the last one at last."

Man on a Mission

A retired electrical engineer came by to ask me if he could take my picture to post on Library Thing. I told him I was already on LT with my picture. He said it was one of his missions to get as many author photos on Library Thing as possible. He was a man with many missions including updating relevant Wikipedia articles, keeping track of the 1000+ books he has and trying to document as much local history as possible.

"My wife thinks I'm crazy," he said.

There were lots more stories and conversations and connections. Oh and we sold some books too!