Library Appearances

As part of the local celebrations of National Library Week, I appeared at three library author events in Colorado during April. First was the Pikes Peak Library District's Mountain of Authors. Here I am at the event, holding the cover art for my upcoming June release, Fatal Descent.

I had a great time reconnecting with Colorado Springs friends at the event, including librarians, readers, and fellow authors. At the next event, the Longmont Library's Colorado Author Open House, I got to sit next to mystery author friend Linda Berry and hear all about her adventuresome trip to Antarctica. After the event was over, Linda and I met up with librarian Sherri Jennings and her husband to share a bottle of wine and swap stories. What an interesting day!

The final event last weekend was the Englewood Library's Colorado Author Open House. While there, I shared a table with friend and fellow author Jeanne Stein. She has her pitch fine-tuned down to three words, "Urban fantasy, vampires." If people look interested, she continues. I'll have to figure out how to follow her lead!

I talked to both Jeanne and fellow mystery author Mike Befeler about avenues for self-publishing. More and more traditionally published authors are considering turning to self-publishing for standalone titles, backlist titles, short story collections, or other projects outside of their mainstream traditional projects. It's a whole new world out there! Below is a photo that Mike took of Jeanne and me, and below that is a photo of all the participating authors.

The Coolest Librarians Alive

With National Library Week being celebrated this week, April 14-20, 2013, I had to share with my blog readers this article about "10 of the Coolest Librarians Alive" and the follow-up, "10 More of the Coolest Librarians Alive." Who is YOUR nomination for Coolest Librarian Alive? Mine is Doris Ann Norris, the self-proclaimed 2000-year-old librarian, who was the guest fan of honor at last year's Bouchercon conference. Here's an interview and blog guest post by Doris Ann, if you'd like to get to know her better.

Celebrating Libraries

I'm blogging today about National Library Week at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors. I hope you will read the blog, then share in a comment how YOU intend to celebrate National Library Week at your local library!

National Library Week

Today I'd like to join readers, authors, and librarians nationwide in celebrating National Library Week, a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation’s libraries and librarians and to promote library use. Also, today is National Bookmobile Day! To find out more about what's happening for National Library week, I suggest you go to the American Library Association page about it or the @Your Library announcement, which includes a Twitter contest.

Contact your own local library to find out how they're celebrating the week. As for my library, the Summit County Library, they've organized quite a few events for this special week. Check out this Summit Daily News article about all of the events, including three today!

I'm a member of the Friends of the Summit County Library, and I'll be volunteering to help at bookfairs and the library information booth at the summer food market. Find out if your library has a volunteer organization that you can join! It's a great way to meet fellow bibliophiles and support your local library at the same time.

Also, if you need to downsize (as I did recently for my move to Breckenridge) and have to give up some of your book collection, donate it to your local library. If they can't use the books in their collection, it's likely that their volunteer organization will sell the books during a fundraiser to raise funds for the library. Hopefully some of those funds will be used to buy books for the library's collection, including those all-important children's books that help instill a love of reading in the next generation.