The First Meeting of Many

Tonight I went to my very first writer-y type meeting through the Canadian Authors Association with my good friend, Christa Davidson. It wasn't a workshop, but one of those monthly meetings where all of the members and wannabe members show up. It was held in a side room of Brewery Bay, and I honestly had no idea what to expect when we walked in the door. I brought my ever present stainless steel water bottle, and noticed immediately that all the tables had jugs of water with floating lemon slices, and glasses set beside them. Right away I wondered if anyone noticed I had brought my own water bottle, and thought I had brought in the booze with me. And, as my ever reasonable friend Christa pointed out, you would have thought that being held at a restaurant, I might have deduced there would already be water there. We found a table and got comfy in  our new surroundings. Actually we happened upon the wobbliest table in the room, the water in the jug actually spilled out onto said table when it wobbled, and got cautiously comfortable. As we were waiting for the meeting to start, a lady introduced herself as Karleen Bradford, and she sat down at our table with us. Once again, my ever trusty friend had the woman googled and the information to me before the introductions were even over. Karlene is quite an accomplished writer of children's books, and she's really kind of a big deal. I thought it was pretty cool that she came to sit with the newbies!

The presenting author was Farzana Doctor, who has written two books and is currently working on her third. The nice thing was, I liked the author as a person. She spoke well and was really warm and down to earth. Plus, she smiled a lot, which I always love. I was totally mesmerized as she read excerpts from her book Six Meters of Pavement, and I put a hold on it at the library as soon as I got home. I'm not generally very adventurous with my reading, and I tend to get into a lot of Eckhart Tolle, Dan Millman, and Wayne Dyer. In other words, it's a lot of self help reading and not a lot of reading for pleasure, so I'm really looking forward to this book.  Faranza answered a ton of writing type questions as well, anything from, "How does an author find an agent?" to  "How often do you write?"

Farzana and Christa

All in all it was a great first meeting with a lot of useful information, and I'll definitely be doing it again!