Even though I’m an avid reader, and have been since before I was a teenager, it was only a couple of years ago that I became aware of the Sonoma County Book Festival. This year, I ended up helping out on the Author Committee, and I’m pretty pleased with our lineup!

The Sonoma County Book Festival is set for Saturday, September 24, 2011 from 10am to 4pm. It’s held outside at Courthouse Square in the area of 4th and Mendocino. There’s something for everyone — a fun children’s schedule, great literary fiction authors, interesting panels, fabulous young adult authors, and well-known poets. Here’s some highlights:

For the kids:

• Megan McDonald
• bilingual storytelling
• The Magical Moonshine Puppet Show
• The Schulz Museum will have artists on hand teaching kids how to draw familiar cartoons such as Scooby Doo and Disney princesses
• The Secret Agent Jack Stalwart Treasure Hunt

For teens and lovers of YA literature:

• A panel called Advice for Teen Writers
• A panel called Save the Drama for Your Mama: Contemporary YA fiction, which features Kim Culbertson, Amy Reed, Nina LaCour and Amy Reed
• Teen poetry slam (with cash prizes!)
• A reading by Daisy Whitney
• The panel Vampires, Ghosts and Zombies, Oh My! Paranormal Fiction for Young Adults. You’ll be able to see Lisa Desrochers, Stacey Jay, and Sophie Littlefield.

For literary fiction readers:

• Tatjana Soli
• Ann Packer
• Elena Mauli Shapiro
• Carol Edgarian
• Carolyn Cooke
• Zoe FitzGerald Carter

Poetry fans:

• Jane Hirshfield
• Judy Halebsky
• Jeanne Wagner

Panels:

• The Sky is High and So Am I: Alternative Subjects
• Books: The Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
• Writing Local History with Gaye LeBaron
• Shots Happen: A Mix of Mystery Writers
• Writing for Film and Stage

This is only a sampling of what’s in store for the day. I hope to see you there!

One of my favorite books in high school was The Handmaid’s Tale, so I chose that as the book I wanted to lead the discussion on over at Classic Reads Book Club.

Here’s how it works: I’ve set up a schedule to read The Handmaid’s Tale over six weeks. Each week, we all read the same sections, and then we go to the Classic Reads Book Club site and discuss it. It should be a lot of fun; kind of like a book club, only in slow motion. This is the schedule:

August 23 – Sections I – IV
August 30 – Sections V – VIII
September 6 – Sections IX – X
September 13 – Sections XI – XII
September 20 – Sections XIII – XV
September 27 – Wrap up

See! Easy! You cahn doo eet!

Please?

I definitely have been known to talk to myself (and the older I get the more I do it! Someone make me stop!), but I’m hoping I’m not talking to myself in late August/September.

If you’re still on the fence, here’s a few words/phrases that might spark your interest:

• Dystopian
• Only a few women have menstrual cycles
• Straddling another woman while she gives birth so it’s as if YOU gave birth to that baby (which now belongs to you)
• Margaret Atwood
• This is crazy shit.

Who’s coming with me?

One of the cool things talked about at BEA during the 7x20x21 session was literary tattoos. I’ve long pondered getting a tattoo, and since I love books, what could be more fascinating than literary tattoos?

There’s a book coming out in October 2010 by HarperCollins entitled The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos From Bookworms Worldwide.

There is also a whole website dedicated to literary tattoos, Contrariwise.

Here’s a few literary tattoos that caught my eye from the website (clicking on the pics will take you to the post at Contrariwise from whence they came):

Those are just a few tattoos out of hundreds. If I were going to get a literary tattoo, then I would want something simple, like the tree in the third pic, but all the things I love about books are that they’ve changed my life perspective, and those things can’t be summed up in a graphic (for me). For example, one of the most mind blowing things I’ve ever read in a book came from Robert Hellenga’s The Sixteen Pleasures:

(The nun is talking about her life before she entered the convent. She and her husband had desparately wanted children but were unable to conceive.)

We had no children. That was a disappointment. Like Sarah — Abraham’s wife. We tried everything, doctors in Milan and in Switzerland, but nothing worked. I had to accept the fact that I was barren. That changed the direction of my life. What I wanted most was denied to me. You come up against something, a roadblock, you’re so sure of the direction you’re going in, the road you want to take, that it’s inconceivable. But a bridge has been washed out. You have to find some other way.

And now look. God has given me these children, my daughters, you see. I could never have foreseen it. Daughters in adundance. That’s what I wanted to say to you. People say that God works in mysterious ways when they really mean that life, or something in their own lives, doesn’t make any sense, but I think that’s wrong. I think it means that we can’t make any sense out of life until we give up our deepest hopes, until we stop trying to arrange everything to suit us. But once we do, or are forced to . . . That’s what’s mysterious.

I’m definitely not getting that tattooed on me, no matter how profoud it is for me.

Another book that had a big impact on me was The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. The lengths that people will and won’t and can’t go to for their marriage was very powerful to me. And even as profound as it was, I don’t know that I want something with such melancholy connotations as a tattoo.

I could go with something from Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. But as much as I loved it, haven’t circus freaks tattooed on my body isn’t quite the look I’m going for.

A lot of folks seem to go for the childhood books, but, well, those aren’t what hold meaning for me. I’m sure my parents read to me, but I don’t remember it. And the first books I do remember picking up and reading on my own (very vividly) are the Babysitter’s Club books.

So then I go back to what I really love that can be represented graphically: pinup girls. I love everything vintage, and pinup girls have been a favorite of mine for 10+ years now. Every year I buy a pinup girl calendar, and for quite a few years I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a pinup girl photo shoot (and have since found Ambitious Misfit Photography (thanks, Ti!) who I will do a photo shoot with if it’s the last thing I do).

(found here)

(found here)

But getting a pinup girl tattooed somewhere is so typical, and how is it going to look in 10 years?

One of the things you’ll see girls do who are in to vintage/rockabilly stuff is have a flower behind their ear. Taking that idea to a tattoo, my friend had a little flower tattooed behind her left ear, so you only see it when she pulls her hair back, and it’s really cute! I’d do that, but I’d just be copying my friend and that feels weird.

So that’s why I’ll probably never get a tattoo. I’ve got the idea in the back of my head that maybe one day I’ll get a tattoo, so if anything ever comes to me, I’ll do it. But until then, I’ll leave my skin the way it is.

If you were going to get a tattoo, what would you get? Have you thought about getting a literary tattoo?

One of the things I was most looking forward to doing this year was having dinner with a couple of friends. We met last year during BEA and got along fabulously, and this year was no different.

Aren’t they adorable?? Tyler works at Scholastic, and Melissa works at Fisher Price and has just completed her first novel. She’s currently searching for an agent, and I’ve so enjoyed following her progress of writing a book. You should check out her blog! She blogs at This Too….

I met them at ‘ino in the West Village. This was an amazing suggestion they had, as everything we ate was really fresh, delicious, and left me feeling like this was one of the gems I’d hoped to find in New York.

If you can’t tell from the pictures, the place is tiny.

One thing I’ve learned is that not every restaurant/city/state (I’m not sure where the law falls) will allow you to bring your own bottle of wine in to a restaurant to drink. Who knew that not all states are just like California? I KNOW! I was surprised, too.

Instead of having desert at ‘ino, we decided to go to Magnolia Bakery to get cupcakes. On our way there, we passed this sign:

…

…

Huh. Good to know. Knowledge is power, right?

Anyway, Magnolia Bakery…oh, it was heaven! I would be in big big trouble if we had a bakery that pumped out cupcakes this fresh. I don’t have a picture of my cupcake because I ate it too fast…sowy.

I wanted to buy a shirt, but they didn’t have any in my size.

Here’s to starting the trip off with a fabulous dinner with friends!

I also did 3 publishing house tours today, so posts about those tours should be forthcoming!

So, uh, yeah. I’ve seen around the blogosphere that some people are all non-procrastinating and stuff and created Google forms so you can trade cell phone numbers so y’all can meet up at BEA…

*sigh*

I’m obviously not one of those people.

I’m a procrastinator, and I probably should have had that post up a week ago. Better yet, I should have gone through my contacts, figured out who’s going to BEA, and sent them an email with my cell phone number so we could meet up.

I know, blah blah blah, Charlie Brown’s teacher, blah blah blah.

All that to say, if you’re going to BEA, I want to meet up with you at some point. If you lurk on my blog and think I don’t know who you are, you’re probably wrong. Since there’s only six of you reading this thing, I can keep track of you pretty durn well.

Oh, and if you don’t know anyone but are going to BEA anyway? You can tag along with me until you meet some of the bloggers. I’ll introduce you to folks, I’ll ease your anxiety, and we’ll have fun. I know that none of what I’m saying makes a good case for the fact that I’m really and truly an introvert, but I appreciate when someone does this for me, so I’m just paying it forward.

Email me at trish at heylady dot net and I’ll send you my cell phone so we can be very 2010 and text each other instead of calling. If I don’t respond to your email, it’s ’cause I didn’t receive it. I like to answer me some emails.