Book Signing Rundown

I had a fabulous time Saturday in Brigham City, Utah, at the Peach Days festival! It's a quaint little town that had a lot happening that day. I can't say it was the best day to do a book signing--people seemed much more interested in just walking around or buying food than purchasing books (you should have seen the line to buy peach cobbler!), but I did get the chance to talk to a few people about my novel, so that's success, right?

With Heather Justesen and Ronda Hinrichsen. And yes,
I cheated...I am standing on the curb and they are not :)

Even better, though, I had the opportunity to get to know a few more authors and an artist who also came in for the day. There were several authors scheduled to be there throughout the day, including Gregg Luke, Shaunda Kennedy Wenger, Marie Higgins, Linda Berthers, Lori Nawyn, Heather Justesen, Ronda Gibb Hinrichsen, Josi Kilpack, and Jenni James. I enjoyed the chance to talk to Gregg for a few minutes (when his fan club dispersed) and learned about his newest book, Deadly Undertakings, which I'm pretty sure I have to read. Yeah, I totally missed out on getting a signed copy from him....[Banging my head against a wall, What was I thinking? I procrastinated and he left!]

Each author took a turn running a literacy game for the public and I had so much fun doing mine. It was kind of a twist on the old carnival bean bag toss, except mine was tossing pencil erasers and where the eraser landed was a genre where you would get a character and were were supposed to name the book and the author. We totally had a blast and I made a new friend of one of the writers/ artists's daughters. If you didn't get to play, I'm sorry...you totally missed out. Maybe at the next book signing!

With Shaun Anderson

I also met an artist who was there in conjunction with the Brigham City temple open house. Shaun Anderson does excellent pencil drawings of temples and his rendition of the Brigham City temple is breathtaking. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does for the Boise and/or Meridian temples. It's so fun to talk with people whose work inspires and uplifts--and that's the experience I had all day.

My favorite part of the day? Well, besides meeting up with a family I hadn't seen in about eleven years (that was a fabulous surprise!) was taking my family to the temple open house. Going there reminded me of my true purpose on earth. Yes, I enjoy writing--I want to entertain, instruct, uplift. I want to help strengthen others' testimonies of the Savior, Jesus Christ. And that's what is most important...my Savior and what He has done for me. The temple is a symbol of my faith and my hope for the future, so yes, even if I didn't sell my entire stock of books on Saturday, I had a phenomenal day!