My agent told me a while ago that I ought to work as hard at promoting myself as I do Writing Matters. But I am a shy person. Its easier for me to advocate for someone or something else, especially when I believe in it so passionately. When its closer to the time for my new novel to come out, Ill promote it as best I can. In fact, here: Ill remind you that its called THE DREAM LOVER, its due out on April 7th. It is a novel about George Sand, Ive gotten some wonderful blurbs for it, AND it made a librarian cry. So there. But now let me switch to something else. A lot of good ideas are born out of a sense of frustration. Thats how Writing Matters happened. I wanted to start a reading series featuring authors who were gifted writers and swell people besides, authors who were well-regarded in the publishing industry, well-reviewed, but not necessarily known to the general public. They would be authors who were not given much of a tour by their publishers, if they were given a tour at all, authors who were not, as they say, a household name. (Though the glory of that is questionable. I always thought if I were a household name people might say things like Hon, would you pick up some toilet paper and an Elizabeth Berg?) Anyway, I remember the night I spoke about starting a reading series in my writers group and we were thinking about what I might call it. The Best Author You Never Heard Of was one suggestion, but then we thought that might be insulting to our guests. Spotlight Author Series was another suggestion but that wasnt right. Writing Matters did seem right. Thus began the 4-times-a-year series, which was meant to honor not only the author but the audience and the community. So the author gets a great audience. The audience gets a great author and food and flowers and food and wine and camaraderie with like-minded individuals and a kid who reads one of his or her essays about why they love reading for a warm-up act. And they get me as MC and author-picker-outer. The community gets a rental of one of its beautiful public spaces and free advertising on our programs. We donate all our proceeds from ticket sales to buying books for children in need. We do that by setting up an account at Magic Tree bookstore, so our local childrens bookstore profits too, as does The Book Table, which sells books at the event. So, whew! There are a lot of people who benefit, including me, because its so joyful to see people embrace an author theyve never heard of, to see that people had the goodness of heart to take a chance and be amply rewarded. Now Im going to give you the link to Brown Paper tickets, where you can get tickets for our December 13th event, featuring author Mark Slouka. Maybe you know and love him and cant wait to meet him. But if you havent heard of him? Perfect! I so appreciate those of you who have already bought tickets, and hope that this reminder will prompt more of you to do so. See you there! brownpapertickets/event/868917
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 14:03:44 +0000
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