Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be part of a sixty author book signing event at the California Dreamin’ conference. The book signing event was open to the public, even though the conference was not. It was preceded by a reader event hosted by Barbara Vey that was, in a word, glorious. More on that in another blog.

To say that I was nervous was an understatement. I was convinced that I would be sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, while readers moved around me and my pile of books in search of better known authors. That didn’t even come close to happening. The readers were awesome and gladly took my swag (pens, bookmarks and lip gloss) and I sold some books. I SOLD SOME BOOKS. People wanted to talk to me and get to know my stories. It was a humbling and moving experience. I can’t wait to repeat it.

At the end of the day the lesson I learned is the lesson you would think I would have learned by now. That is that the negative tape that plays in my mind that convinces me I’m going to fall flat on my face is nothing more than an echo of the past and has no business in today. Yet it is always there, like a ghost that lingers after the house has been torn down. I’m not Jayne Ann Krentz by any means, not even close. But I’m not nothing, as that tape would like me to believe. I should have remembered that readers, just like when I am on the other side of that table, want to find good books and new authors as badly as I do when I’m at a massive event. There’s nothing better than a new author and new worlds to explore. It’s only that silly ghost that tells me I’m not good enough.

I hope that I will hear from the people who were at my table at the reader event and also those who took a chance on an author who was new to them. I want to say thank you to all of them and hope that my books lived up to their expectation. There’s more where that came from.

Happy reading!

Claire