Writing Through Clouds

The final event of a week-long literary celebration, the Fourth Annual Collingswood Book Festival in historic Collingswood, New Jersey is usually held outdoors under tents and awnings and whatever else people set up. This year, for the first time, rain drove the event indoors to the nearby Collingswood High School — but the weather didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the thousands of bibliophiles (that’s Latin for “book lovers,” in case you didn’t know) as they converged on the Festival to browse, buy, and share!

Well, here’s a quick summary: IT WAS A TOTAL BLAST!! But keep reading for the details…

This was our first out-of-state show. The drive up on Friday evening was a long one because of the rain and a lot of weekend rush-hour traffic, but when we arrived at Mary Jo’s Aunt Kathy’s house, she had sandwiches and wine and fruit all ready for us. It was just what we needed after three hours on the road! She took great care of us (and great pictures too, as you can see). Thanks again, Aunt Kathy, for such a warm welcome!

The Book Festival staff did a great job moving the event over to the High School — which was made even more complicated because of construction on the school grounds that turned the place into a maze of detours and fences. Our space was in a corridor — at first it seemed like the “back of beyond,” but we were actually on the main route between the two big exhibit areas — and, just as importantly, on the way to the bathrooms!

We met many cool people throughout the day — teachers, fellow writers, historians of both the professional and dedicated amateur kind, and people who have their own personal connections to the time and place discussed in Seeing Through Clouds. We even had a chance to talk with two ladies from Collingswood’s brand-new Shakespeare troupe — who were in full-dress Elizabethan costumes because the troupe had just wowed the crowd with a performance of a scene from Hamlet!
A lot of people stopped by to compliment Mary Jo on her knitting too, which turned out to be a neat way to meet interesting people. In addition to new and used books, there were kids’ activities, a “name the author” contest, guest speakers, music, and food — the day just flew by with all the activity going on around us! It was a great place to be.

We ended up selling more books there than we’ve ever sold at a single venue! And a lot of people who didn’t buy copies picked up bookmarks with the website address; if they like the sample chapter and all the features there, they might order copies for themselves.

Aunt Kathy bought us each a Collingswood Book Festival t-shirt — which, along with the photos, stories, and memories, will long remind us about the fun time we had. Talking about it later, we realized that if we had been outdoors, we probably would have sold every last copy we had! So you can bet we’re going to be back next year — rain or shine!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 8th, 2006 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.