Book Festival, meeting publisher and wonderful breakfast story

Okay - I posted that the SC Book Festival was this weekend and that I had met my publisher, Karen Syed. Most delightful woman to talk to. She told me now that I'm published with her, I can submit other short stories to be published - so that's pretty cool - If I have a short story I want published, I can submit - now I'm stoked about getting my stuff out there.

Saturday afternoon, I attended one of the workshops that was available to those preregistered to the festival. It was Dick Cote's Promotion 101 - how to promote yourself and your books. It was an excellent workshop. One of the items he mentioned doing was to have a website, so that is next on my agenda as far as promoting myself. I've found a website I can order mini CDs (another idea) for like $20 bucks for 100 of them. I hope this week to get website up and running, although I'm not sure how long it will take me. Supposedly this free site I'm using is supposed to be very easy and anyone can do it in half an hour or less. I just need to have an idea of what I want to put on the website, and what to call it - scary things but I'm sure once I figure those things out, the setup should be very easy. (I'm using Blue Voda for my website design - so as soon as that is done, I will let you all know. Probably link my blog to my website and vice versa.)

Now being in Columbia for two days, I have a local restaurant that I like to go to and eat breakfast. The restaurant is called Lizard's Thicket and it is home cooked meals, country cooking type food. When I go for breakfast, I always order the creamed chipped beef on toast with a glass of chocolate milk. Yesterday I was feeling the need for some fruit, so I added a banana on the side. I was enjoying my breakfast when this group of three people sat down at the table next to me. Two women and a man. He was very animated and I couldn't help but eavesdrop on the conversation. He was talking about the business or company he works for renting the Atlanta Aquarium for their awards banquet or something fancy - black tie affair.

He tells these two women that they (he and his wife and all the other people at the dinner) had to stand up and wait around. So they finally get to the buffet, and he looks down; there is beef and chicken and vegetables on the buffet - and other sides and stuff, but no fish. (By this time I'm snickering to myself due to the fact that they are in the aquarium and there is no fish on the buffet). He says he is in the mood for fish, so he proceeds to start pointing at the displays behind the servers and tells them he would like that and that and that for dinner. The women are cracking up by now and I was too but not out loud. Then the waitress comes to take their order. He wants an egg and cheese and somethng and mushroom omlette and the waitress shakes her head no at the mushrooms. He starts in on about no mushrooms. I just looked over and made a comment to one of the ladies about him being fussy and she said that was normal for him. I said I could tell by the way he was talking about wanting fish and there was no fish on the buffet. So they invited me over to their table to hear the rest of the fish story. I refused because I really needed to head to the convention center to get to my duties at the book festival.

They kept urging me over and finally the second lady just got up and started moving my food and stuff to their table. So here I am sitting among strangers eating my breakfast. I had my name badge on for the book festival (but that comes in a bit later).

So he proceeds to finish the story of the dinner at the aquarium. After they ate, he and his wife went looking at the displays and they found one case that is supposed to be a rare shrimp like from Africa with only 5 or 6 in existence (my daughter confirmed this as they just went to the Atlanta Aquarium about two or so weeks ago). He was looking in the case and didn't see anything, but then he saw the little eyes looking at him and someone hollered shrimp, and he and his wife were pressed up against the glass. He was very animated telling this and the three of us (me and the two other women) were just giggling away. So his wife wants to go look at the beluga whale display. After they disengage from the crowd, they went to the whale tank. He said one was up at the top (probably getting air or something), one was doing flips or spinning around or showing off and the third was swimming towards the glass. His wife was reading the placard and told him, "You better stand back because they eat penguins and if they eat you, they wouldn't need to be fed for a week."

Now here we all just break out laughing. So fish story over, they start asking me about my name badge and volunteering for the book festival and all. Somehow the conversation came back to my story being published and they were so fun and questioning. They bought my breakfast for me because I was a published author - how cool is that? - I had printed off about 8 copies of the story for some friends who had no internet access or no way to order through the internet and had sold them at the same price as online ($1, although I ended up losing money on that deal, but it was exposure for me) and had sold 6 locally, had two copies in the car - one that I had already signed for another friend to put in the mail and the other one not signed or anything. So I went out to the car and got the last copy and signed it and gave it to them. I got exposure and got a breakfast out of the deal.

So overall, the weekend was well worth it, even though I am having problems getting out of bed and walking around due to having stood most of Saturday and yesterday. My low back and left hip and knee are giving me fits. I can barely put my weight on the left leg to get up from a sitting position to stand but once I'm up, I'm okay - it's just the initial getting up and getting off the bed in the mornings. I do hope this shall pass and that within a week or so I'll be back to semi-normal - lol.

Okay - that is it for me today - see you all in the postings - E :)