Apologies for the late post today. Mom and I drove down to Baltimore on Thursday for the Baltimore Book Festival and got back Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t able to do the post ahead of time for this morning and then I had to take Grandma E to the doctor.
So here’s what the last 4 days looked like.
View from our room.
Our room at the Residence Inn
USS Constitution
Spinach Salad at M&S Grill
Parmesan crusted flounder
Author tents on Friday
The Inner Harbor
Loved this dog at the Visitor Center
SFWA panel on what’s new in Sci-fi and fantasy
RWA Book Cover Bingo–most fun hour of panels
I won the fabulous Rebecca Rivard’s book in bingo!
Lunch on Friday
crossing genres panel
Dinner at the James Joyce Pub in Harbor East with the amazing Lauren and Sean–my bmore buddies!
The dessert that made me clap my hands. Bailey’s ice cream with caramelized brown bread pieces mixed in. Plus a fan of apples and strawberries.
Saturday in my author tent
Awesome shot of me signing books by JM McDowell, who came up to say hi and helped out during the unexpected tent move. 🙂
I reconnected with a high school friend at our 20th reunion last weekend and he came out to see me and get my books when we realized I would be in his city! Thanks Kadin! 🙂
The best chicken sandwich ever–Chick-Fil-A
Free hotel breakfasts rock!
Home!
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Had some cool experiences already with readers from the Baltimore Book Festival.
First, someone came out to see me because he joined my mailing list at last year’s event and wanted to tell me how much he enjoyed Six Train. So cool!
Second, Emma, this adorable girl I met at this year’s event, bought my book and immediately started reading it. I know because she texted me the next day to let me know she loved the opening and that it was a “page turner.” I was so thrilled to hear from her!
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I am teaching a one week online workshop on The Importance of Giving Up over on Savvy Authors next week. There’s still time to sign up if your interested.
Workshop Summary
We all have moments of self-doubt. Times where we wonder if we are on the right track with a story or with our pursuit of publication. Everyone talks about the power of perseverance, but no one really talks about how important it is to give up. To let yourself admit that things aren’t working out and to re-evaluate what you are doing. Sometimes we need to step back and decide if something is really worth it. We need to remember that this is a choice. And at any time we can choose to stop or choose to keep going. Sometimes giving up is the only way to find our way back to our story and our dream of publication.
Level: Mixed
Where: The Savvy Forums
Cost: Premium Members $20 / Basic Members $30
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Interesting take-home from the workshop. Something we don’t always like to think about but should keep in our minds. Stepping back and changing things up may be just what we need.
Sounds like it was a great time. Enjoyed your pics!
Thanks. I find that giving up is sometimes the only way to get through things.
It was an adventure. Met some cool people. Was on the go a ton. 🙂
It was great getting to spend some time visiting with you and your mom. 🙂 I’m just glad that the tent move didn’t seem to impact you and your fellow authors too badly and that the weather turned out far better than originally forecast! Rain would’ve been awful.
Now here’s hoping that a lot of YA readers at my local library will enjoy TGWIG as much as I do! 😀
It was so awesome to see you too! LOL. The weather was a godsend. Rain would have killed our sales. Yes, let’s home so! 🙂 Hugs!
That’s great that you got to see JM out there in the real world! 🙂
Second time too! She came out to my workshop in VA in 2014 with Six Train’s book tour. 🙂 She and her husband are really awesome. Highly recommend meeting up if you can. 🙂
What you have to say it great but these photo insights are wonderful. I love seeing where you’ve been, what you do, and oh lovely… what you’ve eaten. I’m happy you’re having a good timeout & about and getting great, well deserved feedback because I know you’ll be hard at work writing as well 🙂
Aw thank you. Photo posts are a bit quicker to get up. I try to cram as much into each trip as I can. Friends, work, promo, fun. BTW, I was labelling postcards and putting stamps on them at night in the hotel to send out this month to CT schools about school visits. I was also editing Six Train’s sequel–first 200 pages again. 😉 My mom was amazed by how much I multitask. 🙂
I’m all about the necessity of sometimes giving up on things. Not that I don’t persevere, but knowing how to evaluate your odds of succeeding + the time involved in doing so is a life skill. We can’t all do everything, now can we?
There’s the opportunity cost of doing something over something else too. You have to pause and take stock. Time and money are limited resources and you have to make choices about how and where you allocate them. Sometimes you have to give up on things to see why you need to keep going and sometimes you need to give up and let something go. Those giving up moments taught me more than any of the holding on moments did. 🙂