Tag: book signings

Possumtown Book Fest Weekend

So this weekend was full of book fun! I went to Starkville Book Mart and Cafe for a signing on Friday–they brought out a punchbowl for visitors and me and Bob and employees to partake of–after I signed my first book at the event, I went and got a cup of punch, and the pattern was set. Now it was a drinking game; for every book sold, I got a cup of punch. Good thing it wasn’t spiked! We sold half the books we had on hand–she had some and I brought some and let her keep them and sell them herself. So I took away a nice check at the end of the day.

Then Saturday, I went to the 2nd Annual Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus, MS just a few miles down the highway from Starkville. That was a LOT of fun! Met some people, like my online writing buddy Shannon, the organizer and bookstore owner Emily Liner, the novelist Snowden Wright, my panel mates Benjamin and Nadia, and various other authors I knew only by reputation. I saw a lot of folks I already knew–MFA alumni, Bookstagramers, MUW professors, MSU professors, Mississippi Art Commision people, etc.

I had fun on my panel. I talked about why I wrote Hurricane Baby: Stories, how I felt being a Mississippi writer, what being a Mississippian was all about, etc. I carried on a good bit, as we Mississippians tend to do. And I got quoted in the local Columbus paper this morning! So that was a neat extra and hopefully may send people to the bookstore to get a copy of my book on Monday or this weekend. That would be nice.

This week I have a TV appearance and my last scheduled book signing. Things are winding down for Hurricane Baby. After this week, I have another TV appearance and two podcast interviews. Then I have a few events scheduled for 2026 already. In three days, the book will have its first birthday. Quite the milestone and a punctuation mark to a wild year!

MWG Coastal Chapter

So Wednesday me and MJ went down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to let me speak before the Mississippi Writers’ Guild chapter in Gulfport. We had a good trip down and got turned around once or twice trying to find the place the event was at, but we managed and had a lovely time.

I did my storyboarding speech that I gave to the students at the Southern Festival of Books, and it seemed to go over really well. I read it along with Tommy Hebert’s first story again, and everyone seemed to like how that fit in with the lecture.

And then we had a great Q&A session, with questions ranging from how I wrote the story to how I had selected the MFA program I attended. It was an interesting mix of people–some older than me, some about the same, and three that definitely seemed to be the young ones in the crowd. But the room was full, and they even had to bring in extra chairs towards the end.

At the end before I left, I handed out my bookmarks with ordering information and my website on them if they wanted to pick up the book or just check me out some more. Those have been the very best idea I had throughout this process–so cheap and so easy to hand out.

Next Saturday is my last event for June–a book signing at a coffeeshop/bookstore named Coffee Prose in the heart of Jackson. We’re going to do it from 9 am-11 am in the morning, then go to one of our favorite restaurants for lunch. I’m looking forward to that.

Just one event in July–I’ll be doing a Zoom meeting for a group of writers in Nevada on July 6, Sunday afternoon. I have no idea what this one is going to be like, so that will be interesting to find out about.

And hopefully next week I’ll get my manuscript back with new edits and see where we can go from there. Happy writing!

Looking Ahead; Looking Back

So my activities are slowing down at this point. I have one event left in June and only one Zoom event scheduled for all of July. I am hoping to get my latest manuscript back from my other two readers by mid-July and plan to take that open time of no events to do whatever other edits need doing on it. I know I want to look very carefully at the word count, at the pacing of the actual beginning pages, and at making sure the continuities are right. We will see if anything else comes up.

August will be important for three reasons: the book will be a year old, the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is that month, and to that end, I have a lot of events scheduled. the first is an online “Talk To Me Day” on Mastodon on August 3, then there’s a Book Mart signing in Starkville on August 15 and the Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus the next day, August 16. Then another shot at a signing at B&N on August 23, another Zoom event on August 26, and finally a podcast recording with fellow author Rod Davis and my friend Shannon Evans on August 29, the actual date the storm hit Mississippi in 2005.

I am making such a big push because first-year sales are so important to the life of a book. I am probably going to stop hustling for events, press, etc. once the first year is over. The good news is I already have several possibilities for events in the next year; I just have to wait and see how those possibilities pan out. And anything else I am invited to I will need to be very judicious about whether to attend or not.

But I could never have anticipated what all has happened for my book this year–the reception by readers, the accolades from various quarters, the support from other authors, the support I’ve gotten from my publisher, my family, and my work–all amazing and humbling for the little book that could.