Romance Author Booksignings: March and Beyond

Sign March 4Last week I attended a booksigning at my local mystery book store, Aunt Agatha’s, featuring two popular cozy mystery writers, Denise Swanson and Casey Daniels/Kylie Logan. Denise Swanson is known for her Scumble River mystery series, featuring amateur sleuth and school psychologist Skye Denison.  The 15-book series began with Murder of a Small Town Honey.  Kasey Daniels has written a number of mystery series, but is most recently known for her Pepper Martin mysteries. Pepper was introduced in Don of the Dead, where while serving as a cemetery tour guide discovered she has the ability to communicate with ghosts.

The authors were in town to publicize new cozy mystery series they have each begun. Denise Swanson’s new series features the owner of a small town dime store, while Kasey Daniels, under the pen name Kylie Logan, has a new series featuring the owner […]

By |2017-06-23T08:31:14-04:00March 6th, 2012|Categories: Authors, Book Signing News, LinnieGayl AAR|Tags: , |5 Comments
Read More

Romance Author Booksignings: September and Beyond

I recently attended a wonderful talk – and signing – featuring Louise Penny, the author of the Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries set both in Montreal and the fictional small town of Three Pines just outside of Montreal. The event was part of the Kerrytown Book Fest in Ann Arbor, and Ms. Penny was interviewed by Robin Agnew, the owner of the local mystery bookstore Aunt Agatha’s.

This was the largest book event I’ve attended. Every seat in the open-air tent was filled, and many people (including myself) had to stand just outside the tent. While the crowd was enormous, everyone was quiet, completely enthralled by the conversation between Ms. Penny and Ms. Agnew.

As I recently wrote a post here about romance in mysteries, I’ll have to state right from the first that there’s technically no romance in the series. Chief Inspector Gamache has been married for years to his beloved Reine Marie. Several of the people in Three Pines […]

By |2017-06-23T08:31:23-04:00September 19th, 2011|Categories: Book Signing News, LinnieGayl AAR|Tags: , |21 Comments
Read More

Romance Author Booksignings: July and Beyond

In the last month there’s been a bit of media flurry about author booksignings. It all started with a New York Times report that some independent bookstores are now charging readers to attend booksignings in their stores. The story was picked up by numerous online sources, including blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates by various independent bookstore owners.

The article notes that in-person author events are something online retailers (Amazon) cannot do. Sure, you can chat with an author online, but you just can’t go to the huge Amazon store to meet an author in person; for that, you need a brick and mortar bookstore.

I attend a lot of booksignings – generally one or two a month – and so far have only read about one event that would cost money (aside from buying a book) to attend. A local independent store brought in Charlaine Harris this past winter. Instead of holding the event at the bookstore (where I’ve […]

By |2017-06-23T08:31:27-04:00July 14th, 2011|Categories: Book Signing News, LinnieGayl AAR, Reading, Romance reading|Tags: , |5 Comments
Read More
...