Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Major New York Booksigning Next Week

This coming Tuesday, June 28, I'll be in New York City signing copies of Royally Crushed and chatting with readers alongside a few hundred other romance and YA authors (yes, you read that right...a few hundred!) This is a great opportunity to get an autographed copy of a book you've been dying to grab--maybe the latest by Nora Roberts or Meg Cabot?--or to buy a special gift for a friend. Best of all, proceeds from the event support literacy charities in New York as well as ProLiteracy Worldwide.

The event takes place in the Broadway Ballroom of the Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square. It runs from 5:30 - 7:30 PM, and there is no admission charge. The only cost is the cover price of whatever books you decide to purchase.

For a complete list of participating authors, visit the Romance Writers of America Literacy Signing information on the RWA website.

This event is an annual one (in a different city each year) and it's a TON of fun. Please come and say hello. Bring a camera, bring your friends, and be ready for a great time!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Trip of a Lifetime

If you could plan out a trip of a lifetime, where would you go?

Last summer, I was able to take such a trip, which I covered in a series of blogs in October, November, and December 2010. On that vacation, I visited Lisbon, Barcelona, Malta, Tunis, several cities in Italy, Corsica, and Nice.

However...I've always dreamed of jumping in my car for a few weeks and driving around the country visiting as many ballparks as possible. I love planning out road trips, so this would be right up my alley. Once I visited 27 bookstores in 24 hours to sign copies of my books, driving around both Tampa and Orlando, Florida (and managed a visit to a Tampa TV studio to film an interview in the middle.) I had as much fun planning out my route as I did at the book signings! I figure a visit to ballparks would be much the same--you plot out all the ballparks you want to visit on a map, then figure out the most efficient route given the MLB game schedule.

Apparently, I'm not the first to want to do this (shocker, I know.) Ben Blatt, an Applied Mathematics student at Harvard University, figured out how to visit all 30 ballparks in 35 days.

(Bit of trivia...I attended the game photographed in the MSNBC article in the previous link. It was a "turn back the clock" day to 1918, which was the last time the Red Sox played the Cubs at Fenway prior to the photographed game. Players wore old school uniforms, Babe Ruth's daughter threw out the first pitch, and there was a "silent inning" where the public address system was muted and batters were announced via megaphone.)

Of course, I am bookmarking the entry to Ben Blatt's blog. Not that I could make the trip this summer, since his itinerary starts today and I have a book deadline approaching (funny thing, those book deadlines!), but it's a great starting point to plan a future summer road trip.

What about you? Where would you go? Prefer to fly, drive, or take other transportation? Let me know about your dream trip!