Lissa Bryan: Book signing

Showing posts with label Book signing. Show all posts

The Weird and Wonderful Dogs of the Texas Book Festival #txbookfest

Photo credit: T.M. Franklin

Austin, Texas is a city with a wonderfully weird vibe. The residents take pride in their quirky culture, which probably makes it the best city in Texas in which to hold a book festival.

I attended this year with my publisher, TWCS, but as great as it was to meet with readers and autograph books, I think I had even more fun meeting all of the dogs brought by the festival-goers.

I kept snapping pictures of all the canines I encountered. My fellow authors even started calling me over whenever a dog came in sight that I might have missed.

I made a comment to Sandi Layne about this delightful furry parade, and she said, "You should do a blog post about it."

Why, yes. Yes I should.

I met this superhero and his tutu-clad companion on the first day. SuperDog had beautiful blue eyes. And possibly x-ray vision. He didn't say. But I can tell you that no supervillains attacked the festival, so thank you SuperDog, wherever you are.

This handsome fellow is Toothless, named after the dragon. He had a tag with a picture of his namesake on his collar.

I encountered this little guy as he was making a run for it.

Fortunately, he was quickly stopped in his tracks when he happened to encounter a discarded crust of pizza on the pavement, and his human was able to scoop him up before we had to summon SuperDog for a rescue.

These two were riding in style, one in a Coach bag and the other in a coach.

This bulldog barked whenever she felt her human was lingering too long at a table of books. Too much to see to dally!

This gentle giant is a Bernese mountain dog. The photo doesn't really capture his massive size, but when I knelt down, his head was on level with mine, and I'm pretty sure he weighed more than I do. He was with the border collie on the right, representing the Austin Dog Alliance, a charity that provides therapy dogs and training classes. The border collie seemed absolutely stoked to be there, the kind of enthusiasm that makes you smile just to see it.

Divine Canines is another dog charity that was represented at the festival. They provide free therapy dog services to help autistic children, veterans with PTSD, and do hospital visits. That was the most chill Labrador I have ever seen.

Some dogs were excited to meet a new friend.

Others were more interested in the crumbs around the food trucks.

I got a lot of kisses.

I saw dozens of different breeds.

Dogs in pairs and trios ...

I even saw a dog and giraffe duo.

All of the wonderful dogs I met over the festival weekend gave me dozens of smiles.

I met one last dog on my way home. The TSA dog was kind enough to pose with Sam, though he had to be convinced not to chew on him.

Thank you, Austin, for another great year at the Texas Book Festival, and for bringing all of your awesome dogs with you! I'm sure I'm not the only one whose day was brightened by them.

Meet Me at the Texas Book Festival #txbookfest

I'll be signing books at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, October 25 at 3:00 and Sunday the 26th at 1:00. We'll be at booth 411.

Stop by if you're in the area and say hello.

Other TWCS authors scheduled to attend:

T.M. Franklin – Michael Schneider – Sandi Layne – Lorenz Font – PJ Parker – Brooke Williams – Sherri Hayes – Michele Birbeck – René Gilley – Krista Richmond

Lissa Bryan & TWCS Authors @ Texas Book Festival! #txbookfest

It's hard to believe it's been a year since the last Texas Book Festival. Last year, at this time, my first book had just been released. This year, I'll be arriving at the festival with two books and a third is on its way in January.

My favorite photo from last year's Texas Book Festival.
I talked a police officer into holding Ghostie for a pic.

On Friday, October 25, the night before the festival begins, I'll be with the other TWCS authors at The Book Spot in Roundrock, Texas for a cocktail party. It's a great chance for readers to meet and chat with the authors.

On Saturday and Sunday, I'll be in the TWCS booth in tent #4, across the street from the Westgate Building. My signing times are 3:30 on Saturday, 12 on Sunday, but I'll be around if you happen to pop in at another time and would like to say "hello."

My Day as an Author at the Ohioana Book Festival

This was my first year at Ohioana, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. My only other experience with this sort of thing was at the Texas Book Festival last October. Then, I had my publisher and a large group of fellow authors with me. For this one, I would be mostly on my own, though my fellow TWCS author Sherri Hayes was attending, too.

.
2009 Ohioana Book Festival from Ohioana Book Festival on Vimeo.

I was seated in a row of authors, between romance and mystery, which I guess was a good place to put me, since I don't really fit in any particular category. On my left was mystery author Casey Daniels-- who also writes as Kylie Logan for HarperCollins-- and on my right was Harmony Evans, from Harlequin. I was the indie filling in a Big Six sandwich.

I was also the only indie at my roundtable discussion. As the discussion started, we were asked to introduce ourselves and tell how we got into the writing gig. I was the last in line, and it felt a little odd telling my story after hearing the other authors' tales of determination and the publishing struggle and agents...

Jillian Kent, Harmony Evans,
me, and Yolanda Tonette Sanders

So, I timidly stammer out my tale and a bit about my books, at one time finding myself on a bit of a blather about Gertrude Stein and Somerset Maugham and reeling myself back in with effort. (I could probably talk about Verdun for an hour, but they were here to talk about romance novels.)

One of the first questions I got: "What is fanfiction?"

So, I explained how a writer might take two existing characters from a published work and send them on new adventures, like writing a story which features Catherine and Heathcliff in modern day America. And that's when the author beside me mentioned That Book.

"Fifty Shades of Gray was once fanfiction... And you're with the publisher who first published it, right?"

This was the audience:

Okay, maybe not that bad, but some eyebrows were raised. And then I sat there, feverishly wondering if I should say, "But I don't write erotica! Not that there's anything wrong with it, but that's not what I write." And by the time my brain-- which is notoriously sluggish about supplying dialogue for real life-- had decided on what to say, the discussion had moved on.

Back at my table, it was busy. The crowd had really increased. It was hard to weave my way back to my table without spilling my tea. And speaking of tea, did they have a nice spread! They had a break room for the authors with tea and coffee. Breakfast was out when I arrived, and then at noon, they served a nice lunch, too. They also had water carts which went down the rows of tables, and volunteers who stopped by periodically to see if we needed anything. I felt positively pampered by the attentiveness.

This was the biggest crowd they'd ever had, I was told, and the festival gets bigger every year. This year, they had ninety authors. Fortunately, I had my True Love with me and he could do most of the "heavy lifting" when it came to the social interaction.

I had a TV set up, playing my book trailers, which you can see to my left in the photo above, and I had Sam and Ghostie with me, the two little mascots I carry to all of my promo gigs. Poor Sam is looking pretty battered after all of his travels! At one point, he was picked up off the table by a toddler and gnawed upon, and I blurted. "Oh, no, you don't want to chew on him. He fell down a mountain." Meaning, of course, that it's not terribly hygienic, but I've never been very good with words verbally. That's why I write, instead.

There was a really cool experience I was glad I got to have: a reader stopped by my table to have a photo taken and get her books signed. She was Emily from Book Jems. She was one of my fanfiction readers and she gave The End of All Things a fabulous review when it first came out. It was awesome to get to meet her.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner with Sherri Hayes and her husband. She has about half a dozen of these things coming up this year. I don't know where she gets the energy!

Enter to Win an Autographed Copy of "Ghostwriter!"

Click here to enter

Romanceaholic has a drawing for an autographed copy of Ghostwriter, and a guest column by yours truly about how I started writing and was "discovered" by my publisher.

Life is full of surprises.

Speaking of contests, I'll be starting the Author to Author blog hop on Wednesday. I've teamed up with some of my fellow writers from various genres to introduce our readers to some new authors, and we're also having a drawing for a BIG pack of ebooks at the end of the hop.

Romanceaholic Guest Post

I'll be stopping by Romanceaholic on November 26th for a guest post and a giveaway of an autographed copy of Ghostwriter.

Autograph Options

I've been getting requests for signed books (which is very flattering) and I've got a few options available.

First is a personalized e-autograph courtesy of Authorgraph. (It used to be called Kindlegraph, but now they're available for all types of ebooks.) There's a handy-dandy widget on the sidebar of my blog.

The second option is mailing your paper copy to me. You ship it to me, then I'll sign it and mail it back. If you'd like to do this, click on my email link at the side and we'll work out the particulars.

And lastly, I have a few paper copies left that I can sell you using Paypal. I'll sign it and ship it directly to you. Email me if you'd like to do this.

I also have signed bookmarks that I'll mail on request. Send me an email with your address and I'll pop it in the mail for you.

NaNoWriMo, c'est moi

I officially signed up today. I'm now a participant in the National Novel Writing Month. Starting tomorrow, participants are supposed to write about 2,000 words per day with the goal of having a 50,000 word novel at the end of the month.

Confession time: I'm cheating just a bit. I already have my novel started. Its working title is Daughter of the Wind and Waves. It's a historical/paranormal set in the time of Henry VIII. My fanfiction fans know how much I love those Tudors. (But don't worry, guys, I'm keeping my nerdy side in check this time and not drowning you in historical detail; nor will there be footnotes, though I pleaded for them.)

I started this novel all the way back in May, but because of the editing I had to finish on The End of All Things, I wasn't able to work on it as much as I would have liked. But now I'm free! Free! (At least for the time being.) I'm hoping that I'll be able to complete it, at least a large chunk of it, this month. It'll be an awesome challenge and it will keep me on track.

If you're participating, add me as a writing buddy by clicking here or on the icon at the top of the sidebar. (I also have a nifty widget to show off my progress!)

If you've ever said, "Someday, I'll write a novel," today is that "someday." Join the challenge! Come on, what do you have to lose? You don't have to write a good novel, after all. There's no pressure, no editing, no judges looking over your work. Just you and a keyboard, discovering what magic can happen.

If nothing else, it's excellent practice.

Ghostwriter Tour, Day Five

Looks like the tour is going to be extended, folks. Our return flight was scheduled to connect through Baltimore. Due to the hurricane, it's been cancelled. The only flight we could get that didn't go through Baltimore was on Tuesday, passing through Chicago. (Though Suzy Duffy just told me that Chicago is having bad effects from the storm, so we'll just have to see what happens.)

Apologies again for the poor formatting of this post. But my iPad fights bitterly to prevent captions and refuses to allow me to place any photo except in the center. When I get home, I'll reformat these posts so they look a little nicer.