You never know who you’ll meet
I am a typical introverted writer. I live in my head a lot. I don’t mind being alone. I actually thrive in silence. It refreshes me. It’s not that I don’t like meeting new people and I don’t have issues with crowds. My natural bend is just to be alone or with people I’m already comfortable with. Unfortunately, this past weekend required me to do none of that. I participated in the South Coast Book Festival in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on Saturday. An event I had never even heard of until the organizer emailed me out of the blue. Now initially, I thought it was a scam. If you’re a writer you know how many fake emails we get from publishers and reviewers and people who can get your book in front of the right audience. So when I got the email about the event, my first thought was this can’t be real quickly followed by how did she find me. After some quick online research, I realized that the festival was actually a real thing. I sat on that registration email for over a month before finally deciding to do it. I mean, what could it hurt. And besides that one of my 2026 goals was to do 4 book events. Needless to say, I am not on track.
Without thinking too much about it, I paid the registration fee and went about the task of getting myself ready. I ordered more books and a new tabletop shelf, made sure I had everything I needed to decorate my table, and updated my website. And then I went about the task of talking myself into, well, talking…to people…to new people. The night before the festival the organizers held a short get-together for the authors and vendors. I didn’t have anyone to go with me so I had to do the unthinkable. Go to an event where I didn’t know ANYONE. I hyped myself up all day, and ultimately talked myself into going. It was uncomfortable but I did it. I met other indie authors and got to talk to them about their publishing experiences. It was actually pretty awesome. And I didn’t die.
Festival day was hectic. Tons of authors and constant foot traffic around the venue. And again, I talked to people. I actually got pretty good at my book series elevator pitch. Something I knew I needed to do but never could figure out how. Apparently, the how is just to jump into the deep and end do it. For seven hours I talked books with strangers, and I did a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself. I am still very much an introvert. I know myself and my natural bend. I guess the lesson this weekend taught me is that bending another way doesn’t have to break you.
Happy Reading!!
