Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Post-Los Angeles Times Festival of Books



I had a great time at the LATFOB last weekend!  That was despite the hot weather. 

My blog post last week was all about my anticipation of going.  I included my schedule, which worked out very well.  I took the LA Metro there, and on Saturday the two trains I rode were particularly packed.  That was partly because of a couple of demonstrations that were scheduled in Los Angeles that day--but there were also a lot of other people heading in the same direction as I was.

On Saturday, I wound up spending about three hours on my feet.  During the first hour I walked all around the University of Southern California campus checking out the many booths that all had some relationship to writing or publishing.  I spent the next two hours at the Romance Writers of America's Los Angeles chapter (LARA) booth inviting passersby in to learn more about romances, enter a contest for a nice-sized basket of books, buy books from authors who were signing there, and buy books written by other authors like me who'd contributed them to the chapter.  Oh, and by the way, there were a couple of hunky guys there--well, posters of them--including Fabio, where people could take selfies with them.

Thanks to the heat and the standing for so long I felt exhausted--but it was worth it.

Sunday started off less happily since I wound up just missing both of the trains I needed to take, which meant a weekend 20 minute wait each time till the next one.  I wound up arriving late for my signing at the Sisters in Crime booth--but fortunately not very late.  I enjoyed my three scheduled signing times that day, at the SinC booth, Mystery Writers of America and Mystery Ink bookstore. I had fun talking to other writers, encouraging readers to stop by and talk and pick up some of my bookmarks--and maybe buy a book or two of mine or the other authors, and I was quite pleased by the number of my books that were in fact purchased.  I wound up staying half an hour longer than I'd planned because of readers coming over to talk--and, yes, buy books.  And my Metro ride back home went very smoothly.


So, in all, it was a fun weekend!

3 comments:

Betty Hechtman said...

I'm glad it worked out well. I heard some negative stuff about the Metro subway last week when I was weighing options on how to get downtown for jury duty. The packed train would have made me claustrophobic.

Linda O. Johnston said...

I've taken the LA Metro a lot and, except for once when it was unable to reach downtown but the explanation wasn't clear, I've always found it much, much better than driving in LA traffic.

Kante Luis said...

thank you