This Year’s Mississippi Book Festival

Before I started writing today about the Mississippi Book Festival, I went back and reread my experience with the event last year. I didn’t know it when I wrote then, but I was only a month away from getting the offer to publish Hurricane Baby from Madville Press. I read it and I can feel the longing and hope in the words that someday I would attend as an official panelist and get a peek behind the curtain of what being a published writer might look like.

And yesterday I found out.

I was proud to be selected as a member of the panel “Mad About Madville” with the other two Mississippi writers Madville Publishing had released books from this summer, Steve Yates and R. J. Lee. Our moderator was Darden North, a local MD who writes medical thrillers along his professional career. Our panel was mid-afternoon and had about fifteen attending–the big draw of the Festival across the street was LEVAR BURTON and JESMYN WARD in conversation; that was some tough competition. But we all three got to discuss our books for an hour and that was just the best feeling ever.

We had the opportunity to sign books that people bought at the event, and I had one young lady come up and ask me to sign her copy of my book. But it was special in that I didn’t know her; she didn’t know me; she had just somehow heard about the book or picked it up out of curiosity and wanted to read it. That was so touching to me and made my day.

It was strange being on the other side. I got to visit author-only hospitality areas; I got to meet several authors I knew only by reputation. I felt every once in a while the felling that you know, being part of this is AMAZING.

The rest of the month is slow for me as far as events are concerned. I hope to catch up at work and on my work-in-progress with some fresh inspiration from the Festival. Happy reading to all!