... at the West Virginia Book Festival. I had at least 40 people (I'm the yellow and black bumble-bee person in the front). Talked about, and did exercises for, jump-starting your novel (or other prose narrative like memoir); getting a grip on the shape of the "loose, large, baggy monster" (Henry James); and then various types of revision specific to novels; and finally structural revision. Attendees were eager to share and laugh, and I had a great time.
Afterward, I hung out in the "Marketplace" with all the book sellers and presses and had lovely reunions with George Brosi of Appalachian Mountain Books as well as Carter Seaton and Eliot Parker, and Derek Krissoff, the director of my publisher WVU Press as well as Susanna Holstein AKA storyteller Granny Sue and many more. Really a pleasure to see old and new friends. In the evening, I went over to Taylor Books to hear WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman read, and there saw Anna Smucker and Valerie Nieman and Nancy Adams. Such fun!
And, for random occurrences of special weirdness: in the coffee shop at Taylor Books along with customers and a a pack of neatly suited Special Service Operatives, was Ivanka Trump. What was she doing there? Well, according to the Charleston Gazette article linked above, she was been driven home from pushing deregulation in Kentucky (which has lost a ton of coal mining jobs since her dad became president) and thought it was too rainy to go on, so stopped at Taylor Books for coffee, music, and to buy a children's book for her little ones.
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