SOUTH CAROLINA BOOK-LOVING PEOPLE

I spent this past weekend in Columbia, South Carolina. Temperatures were in the high 50s, sun was shining, and I was holed up in the city’s convention center with more than 4,000 book-loving, book-reading, book-writing people who had chosen to attend the 2010 South Carolina Book Festival.

Yes, it’s fun to rub shoulders with the likes of Ron Rash and Jill McCorkle, Robert Hicks and the darling Lee Brothers.  And often that was all it was — literally rubbing my shoulder against theirs as I passed them in a crowded hallway.

I met some wonderful writers like South Carolina novelist and master gardener Mindy Friddle,  New York Times best-selling author Karen White, writer and humor columnist Celia Rivenbark who reminded of the expression “just a half bubble off plumb” and Nina Bruhns who writes romance thrillers and definitely has me thinking of today’s romance genre very, very differently.

I sat on an extremely well-attended panel with Celia and Nina, sold out of books, ate too much food, danced a little and came home dog-tired.

But the best part of all was that I spent time with incredibly passionate, voracious readers that inspired me to sit down at my desk this morning and tell another story.

Posted March 1, 2010 at 4:47 pm · 1 comment · Leave a Comment