My First Author Talk for Fall

My homework paid off; some time in Port Ludlow

After my last post about being so bummed to not have a book talk venue, I have one lined up for October. I’d emailed the Port Townsend Library a couple weeks ago, and this week they replied that my book event sounded perfect and offered me a choice of dates in early October. We decided on Wednesday, October 4th (That’s right, “10-4, Good Buddy”), in the library’s Carnegie Reading Room, from 7 to 8pm.

I’ll show some slides and talk about that first trip to Baja on Watchfire, the Honeymoon at Sea as it were—touching on the inner journey (How I Found Myself)…as well as the voyage itself (Living on a Small Boat). Hopefully, some people will already have books for me to sign; I have submitted the title to a few retail locations in PT, like Imprint bookstore, and I hope they will be carrying it by then. We will also do a talk for the Port Townsend Yacht Club in November.

The talks for 2024 are coming in too, like a First Friday event with San Diego Writer’s Ink on Groundhog Day, and a slideshow for Wild Wednesdays which is hosted by Adventure-16 at a very cool brewery in the east San Diego area. Plus there will be a singing at La Playa Books and definitely be some yacht club and sailing talks in the San Diego area, which my friends down south are setting up even now. Thanks, amigas!

Meanwhile, we sailed down to Port Ludlow, where we have been picking the ripe blackberries that line every walkway around here, enjoying the lovely quiet anchorage, and even joining friends for a lively dinner on their boat in the marina. Though the late-summer weather has been typically warm—it will hit 80 tomorrow—the northerly winds have come up just enough to keep us cool, and even our intense, hilly, four-mile hike through the woods to the little grocery store this morning wasn’t too sweaty an outing.

In the next four weeks, I am set up to do two more podcasts, and two radio show interviews. I’ve also written two articles for online magazines that my publicist submitted me for, and my Top Five Baja Books list for Shepherd.com is now live here. I should have the clip from the Neil Haley Show soon, too, so I will share that next time. In other words, it’s beginning to feel like the book marketing and promotion machine is kicking into high gear now.

I am doing some teaching next month, too. On September 16 and 17, I’ll be doing some virtual one-on-one advance submissions at SCWC, my favorite bi-annual writing conference, and the following Saturday, Sept 23, I will be teaching Editing for Writers, and How to Finally Write Your Memoir at the always-wonderful San Diego Writers, Ink.

Something else exciting happens next month…Oh, right, my book comes out Sept 19. If you haven’t already pre-ordered, here is the link to bookshop.org where you can support indie bookstores—and of course, you will also be supporting a small woman-owned publishing house, re:books of Toronto.

One slide for the slideshow. The day we left San Diego in 1989. Were we cute, or what?

We will try to get a book trailer filmed and edited by then, hopefully earlier, who knows? I have definitely learned a lot about recording my voice, using my new Yeti Blue X mic and my laptop and it seems to work fine. Now I have to figure out, or at least re-learn how to edit video. Oh, yay.

I am trying to decide about doing a virtual book launch in late September, just to get together and celebrate with friends and family online. Maybe on Facebook live? Would that even work? Any thoughts on yes or no? Ideas for how and where to host that? Please comment here; I definitely appreciate all the nice feedback, good ideas and basically any input.

hasta pronto!