Then There’s Book Club

Last Monday I was invited to speak to a book club. A friend who had read my debut novel, An Anchor On Her Heart, and who belonged to a local group of readers asked me to come and share with her fellow booklovers. She said I could speak on anything I wanted to share. That advice certainly left the door wide open to possibilities.

Thanks to a fellow author’s tips on what she did for book clubs I was able to come up with a couple of ideas. I’m not sure I shared what these women wanted to hear, but we wound up laughing several times. The evening passed quickly in a whirl of amusement.

I had prepared gift swags for the attendees—plastic goody bags filled with candy, bookmarks, a refrigerator magnet, and a cookie bar central to the story itself. I had the guests guess what item in the bag had been triggered by something in the story and the woman who guessed correctly received a door prize. I also passed around a tin with three items in it and asked them to decide which item had significance to a scene in the story. That prizewinner took home a copy of my latest book, Love Calls Her Home.  

When I opened the discussion up for questions, I was amazed by the way the women talked about my characters. One would have thought the hero, Rudy Taylor, stood in the room as they voiced their opinions of him and his actions. A couple of them wanted to give him a piece of their minds when he left McKenna to fend for herself after a personal tragedy. Knowing they saw him as a real person made my day.

Dessert was shared, along with the good feelings that come from a group of friends. I felt as if I had gained fourteen new ones that evening—one of the perks I never imagined when I first began to write novels.

Thanks, again, ladies, for a wonderful evening and for the thoughtful basket of violas. My door prize.