Authors, authors, everywhere

I met ANOTHER actual published author today.  I met her months ago, actually, but I found out she’s an author today.  She works (or maybe volunteers for riding time?) at the farm, so I see her once or twice a week.  We exchange hellos, we know each other’s name, but we haven’t said more than a few words to each other before today.  She seems shy.  Today, she was walking with me as I took Tigger to the indoor arena, and she mentioned going somewhere for book research.  Book research?  I pounced.  A little.  Nicely.

Turns out she wrote three historical romance novels for Harlequin in the early 2000s, at least one of which did pretty darn well.  She said she’s had writer’s block for a decade (writing stopped being fun and became stressful instead), and she wants to branch out of romance.

Anyway, I’m super curious, and I will be reading the first of her books soon.  By Tuesday, I expect to have a signed copy of Beauchamp Besieged by Elaine Knighton.  Exciting!

I made John drive

We went to Portland last Saturday, mostly to check out the neighborhoods of apartments we’d consider renting to see if Portland is our next move.  The verdict is still out, but it wasn’t a promising day.  We drove all over town, but not much was available where we want to live.  Kind of disheartening.  We did get a better sense of the city, though, and it still seems pretty cool (despite recent news and undercurrents).  The one place we got totally distracted by could be the BEST, but its main problem is that you can’t walk to ANYwhere from it.  It’s near the top of a ridge, I think the neighborhood is Hillsdale, and the place was AMAZING.  The drive up is twisty and winding with spectacular views of the city and the river and beautiful houses.  This apartment (house?) is 2 bedrooms, 1200 sq ft.  We think it’s a big apartment over a three-car garage, but the ad isn’t clear.  It’s a detached building, next to a beautiful house with gargoyles on the front walk.  GARGOYLES.  It would be quiet and peaceful and beautiful and impossible to get in and out of in bad weather or in a hurry if you want to run a quick errand.  It’s the opposite of what we have in Eugene (and what we want), which is a house close to shops and restaurants and the library and walkable to everything.

It’s a no.

Still available, though, if anyone else is interested.

Book Club News

The SWV NOW Book Club meeting (we discussed Negroland) was really good.  Of course it was – these are good people.  We ate, we chatted, we drank a little wine, we talked about the book.  (Don’t tell my other book club, but this was more fun.)  That was on a Thursday night.  My other book club was meeting the following Tuesday to discuss Our Souls At Night, so I read my way through that, made a couple of notes, and then totally flaked on the meeting.  I didn’t remember until the next morning.  Maybe it’s a sign that I should just stop going to that one.  I haven’t been since the end of March.

Back to the SWV NOW book club and how it’s just better: our next book, The Gate to Women’s Country, was my choice, and it really didn’t take much convincing to get the others to agree to read it.

I hope they like it.  It’s one of my favorites.  If they don’t like it, I might cry.  I’ll certainly suffer from flashbacks to when my first book club didn’t like World War Z.  Most of them didn’t even read it.  Snobs.