Oregon City Library Celebration and Author Fair

Today is the 100th birthday of the Oregon City Carnegie Library, and tomorrow is the festival celebrating it. By a strange quirk of fate, the OC library is currently housed in the Carnegie Center, the same building where it opened its doors in 1913. The library has lots of fun events planned which you can read about here.

One event in conjunction with the library festival is the Atkinson Author Fair which will be held across the street in front of "the pink church." I'll be there representing my books as well as some other books put out by Madison Street Publishing. The author fair runs from 10:00am - 3:00pm. Stop by and see me if you're in the area!

Desultory Remarks IV

On Saturday I attended my first Author Fair, this one hosted by Atkinson Memorial Church, a mere thirteen blocks away from my house in Oregon City. There were about forty local authors there from a variety of genres, and a few less than forty attendees if my guesstimates are correct. I didn't sell a truckload of books (ok, let's be honest--I sold one copy of I Serve), but I had lots of fun chatting with the other authors about books, the publishing industry, politics, religion, and all sorts of other topics not recommended for polite conversation.

Would I do it again? Probably. Although I must admit that it was the first time I had abandoned Marcus for more than an hour or two. He was fine and had lots of fun with his dad and brothers, but I missed him....

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Last September, when Road from the West was released, we bought three advertising spots for it in Kindle Nation Daily, a website for Amazon e-book promotion. Funny thing is, it's been so long since then that I completely forgot we had our last ad coming out today. Good thing they e-mailed me to let me know.

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Now that David is out of school until September, our summer has officially begun. I'm determined to finish the first draft of Flower of the Desert: Book II of the Chronicles of Tancred before summer is over. I've set myself a writing goal of 5,000 words a week. Week 1 was tough but I made it. My strategy? Not allowing myself to go to bed until I've written 1,000 words for the day. Week 2 sleep deprivation overcame my good intentions, and for the sake of my sanity (and my children's wellbeing) I was about 1,500 words short. Week 3 is currently underway. It's Thursday morning and I'm at 2,854 words. Will I make my goal? It's anyone's guess. 

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Despite a bizarre plummet to almost freezing last night, the weather has been absolutely beautiful this week. The boys have been enjoying the outdoors to no end, and we've all been enjoying the garden that David's labored so long to create.

Our cherry tree and tulips

The sidewalk got the best of Adam 

Playing on the swingset at Aunt Amy's