Sometimes I just can’t come up with a title. Frankly, I just wanted to talk about random things…I’m feeling very chatty and kinda needy right now, so who better to talk with than you!

I owe a huge thank you to Heather from Age 30+…A Lifetime of Books for taking pictures of me at the Baltimore Book Festival. I now have proof that I moderated a panel of authors! Sort of. There’s no pics of me on stage, but there are pictures of me with the authors!

From right to left: Margot Berwin, Mary Monroe, me, Lyah Beth LeFlore, and Donna Andrews.

We were hanging out in the author area where they provided food, a private bathroom (no port-a-potties!), and a lovely place to sit! We all felt very important.

Me and Heather!

I thought this was a great post over at pages turned on blogging burnout. Have you ever felt burned out on the whole thing? Like you could walk away and not even miss it?

Last night I went to my knitting group for the first time in months. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t allowed myself to do the knitting group, but I’m finally caught up and can have fun again! I was disappointed to find that one of the women I love won’t be coming regularly because of health problems. She’s not very old but has really bad arthritis and other issues, and I guess they’re getting worse. I’d only known this lady a month or so when I had a dream that she died and I was at her funeral. I was sobbing and my husband had to wake me up.

I’ve been in a reading funk. I’m not really into The Time Traveler’s Wife, not really into Burnt Shadows, and frankly I just want to read Fire by Kristen Cashore. I loaned it to someone, and it should be in the mail to me, but I can’t read nothing in the meantime! I just started Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell because he’s coming to my local independent bookstore, and it’s really quite good. It might do the trick and bring me out of my funk. But in the meantime, got any really fantastic-blow-me-away suggestions for books?

A sales person called my work the other day, trying to reach my boss who happens to be the department head. She wouldn’t admit she was actually a sales person and was being really cagey. Then I heard, “What up, dawg!” in the background, and started questioning her more. She finally said that the old department head (my old boss) had told her to call, and if I wouldn’t put her through to the new department head, she’d call my old boss back on his cell phone. I said, Well I can just call him on his cell phone too and find out who you are. And then she says, Are you threatening me? and she goes on like that for a while, and I was like, Is this the Twilight Zone? What planet did I wake up on? I wish I was quicker, because I would have called her on her bullshit, but I think I was so confused that she wouldn’t tell me where she was from and then was asking if I was threatening her. I had all kinds of good comebacks after she hung up!

I recently entered a baked good into the Harvest Fair here. I won 2nd place in my category! I should mention, though, that only two people entered in that category. But hey, a win’s a win, right? That’s how I like to win…with no other competition!

Have I ever told you I used to eat raw ground beef? Not a lot of it, just a nibble when my mom was making burgers. I couldn’t do that now, though.

That’s it! Anything you’d like to chat about?

I challenged Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog to read a Nicholas Sparks book after hearing how terrible he was at the National Book Festival. I meant to do a video that chronicled how I picked out the book that will be her demise Rebecca will have to read, but I didn’t do that, so this video will have to suffice.

Ahh…the joys of challenging someone else to something painful and excruciating is strangely exhilerating.

Did your jaw drop open when you read the title? I know just how you feel. Let me tell you the backstory.

Heather from Age 30+… A Lifetime of Books asked me, I don’t know, back in January, to be on a panel she was doing at the Baltimore Book Festival about book clubs. I’m no expert on book clubs, but my journey to starting my own book club was long and arduous, and now that I have my own I’ve been obsessively interviewing other book clubs to figure out how they work, so while I’m no expert, I actually kinda am. I told Heather I would absolutely do it if I had the money to make it out there. Well, things fell into place and before I knew it I was confirming with her that I’d be able to come. And I was totally stoked! I was going to be on a panel! In front of people! With a microphone! At a book festival!

And then.

Heather emailed me and was like, Respond within 10 seconds of my sending this or you will hate yourself forever! Luckily, I had my email open so I saw it as soon as it came in (oh, who am I kidding? My email is practically a fifth appendage.), and Heather explained that the folks running the Baltimore Book Festival had asked her to moderate a panel…an author  panel, but she couldn’t do it, so she wanted to know if I was interested?

::blink::

::blink::

Umm…am I interested in MODERATING AN AUTHOR PANEL AT A BOOK FESTIVAL? Where do I sign, because I’ve already talked to my husband about promising my first born child to you?

So the day of the Baltimore Book Festival rolls around. There’s a ton of bloggers in the DC area, but everyone, I mean EVERYONE, was going to the National Book Festival. So I’m wondering if my panel really happened, since none of my friends were there to see it, but since the shirt I wore still has sweat stains from that day, I’m pretty sure it happened.

But before I can tell you about MY panel, I have to tell you about the panel I was on with Heather, because that happened first.

First, this is Heather’s graphic for her panel. Isn’t it awesome?

Heather found great people for this panel. One panelist teaches librarians how to moderate book clubs, and another panelist who is a native English speaker is in a book club that discusses in Spanish books that are written in Spanish. Freaking amazing.

Anyway, Heather’s panel went perfectly! She allowed time for questions, she had books to give away, she had an outline of points she wanted to cover, she kept the panelists on track, and she looked beautiful. There was easilty 25-30 people who attended the panel, which was perfect! Basically, she filled the seats she was allotted.

I can’t say enough nice things about Heather.

Then. THEN. It was time for MY panel. The panel was entitled Fabulous Females of Fiction: Four NY Times Bestselling authors dish about their writing, their characters, and their lives. The authors were:

• Donna Andrews, author of Swan for the Money
• Mary Monroe, author of God Ain’t Blind
• Lyah Beth LeFlore, author of Wildflowers
• Margot Berwin, author of Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire

And then I found out that my panel was on the main stage. THE MAIN STAGE. I think I fainted when I found out.

There was bright lights on us, we had snazzy directors’ chairs, and someone introduced ME! As if I was important and didn’t end up being the moderator on a total fluke!

Unfortunately, I don’t have much to report after this. I ultimately asked 3 questions, but with 4 authors, that’s all we had time for. The time flew by and I did my best not to look like a grinning idiot, but I think I failed at that. I hope I can moderate a panel again in the future. It was so fun, so exhilerating, and so…ADULT.

Also, there was 50+ people in the audience. Pretty cool.

That’s all. That’s all the story I’ve got about my panel. Sorry there’s no pictures! Not only had I left my own camera at home (which was 3,000 miles away), but none of my friends were there to take pictures. But I swear it happened!

Speaking of pictures, I’m going to lift some pictures off other blogs to show you what a great time we had. I couldn’t possibly mention everyone, but I did want to mention a few special people I met (or already knew from another event and was excited to see them again).

Heather, me, and Amy.

Heather, Nicole, and Michelle.

Garret Freymann-Weyr and me. We geeked out over each other, and she made my day by saying how cute I was. She and I would be so fun together!

These are the only pics I have, and they’re thanks to Heather.

Rebecca is…amazing. She’s hilarious, fun, and smart. Pretty much I want to be her friend, but being across country is frustrating!

I could go on and on about how fun it was to share a hotel room with Nicole, about how Amy is always so fun to hang out with and chat with, about how I couldn’t wait to meet Michelle because she and I spend a lot of time chatting on gmail, about how I got to see Swapna’s house…but I won’t bore you with all of that!

Each blogger meet-up is more fun than the last! The next event I’ll be attending is the LA Times Festival of Books on April 24 & 25, 2010. You should come!