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