Appreciating A Super Author

Few authors reach what I consider "super" status, but when they do, let me say, they deserve the royal treatment. As in a parade. As in a reception. As in a television interview in front of two hundred plus adoring fans. As in what happened in Hudson, North Carolina last weekend.

Jan Karon.

If you've never been to Mitford in your mind, then you don't know Jan Karon. If you have been to Mitford through reading her cozy novels, then you know her. You also know where she comes from. Here. Small town western North Carolina. Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In her writing, she created a humble little village like I would find around where I live, populated with all kinds of fictional, but very real, friends of mine. Yes. I will claim them as friends and well known acquaintances, because the books in her Mitford series ooze with delightful characters that I feel like I know personally. I've met these people in my daily wanderings. 

Sort of. That's what great writers do, construct a setting so real you feel a part of it.

Last weekend, I discovered I'm not the only fan of hers. She has enough readers to deserve a parade in her honor.

Enough to mob her so those of us in the back can barely see.

To earn the key to the city from the mayor.

To be interviewed in front of the standing room only crowd by Carl White, executive producer and host of the award winning television show, Life in the Carolinas.

I attended it all. The parade. The brunch. The afternoon tea the next day with the live taping of the show and visits from some of her characters straight from the pages of her imagination.

And one more thing. I joined fellow readers in marveling at the delicious orange marmalade cake mentioned often in the series that had been made special for us attendees. Yum.

What a super weekend! What a way to celebrate an author!

Catch of the day,

 

Gretchen

Outlanders R Us

Being an author has opened my life a wide variety of unanticipated experiences. One was yesterday at Leatherwood, a mountain resort here in western North Carolina. There's just something about being around passionate book lovers, in this case the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series set first in Scotland, and later in North Carolina. Here was my view: 

These kilted soldiers were in the process of returning to their encampment. A bagpipe's drone in the background sucked me back in time, much like the main character of these beloved books.

My tent was closer to the simple beauty of the flute.

And then later that of the harp.

None of my books cross paths with the time travel Scottish Highlander coming to America story of the Outlander series, but I did have books to offer, and these festival attendees were avid readers, after all. To those I met from Florida and Texas and Canada and Scotland (yes there were some who traveled across the Atlantic to this place in time specifically for the Fraser's Ridge Homecoming event), everything about the Appalachians was a draw. Reading for the love of adventure no matter where is the most remarkable phenomena ever! 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

PS Check out the website for Fraser's Ridge Homecoming. You might have missed it this year, but next year's date has already been announced.