Author Fair Participants

photo by Terry Donoho

From left to right: Sally R. Alexander of CMPPG, authors Kimberly Ann Freel, Bea Alden, Jean Vernon, me, Aline Lesage, Jesse Jayne Smith, and Suzanne Bates and Tracy Lawlor of Theytus Books.


photo by David A. Hamilton

Catherine Jameson and the star of her book, Zoe and the Fawn.

I was able to round up alot of great people for the Two Rivers Author Fair this year. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of talent we have here in this sparsely populated area.

Catherine Jameson is an award winning author. She grew up in Oroville and now lives close by in Penticton, B.C. Her picture book, Zoe and the Fawn, is beautifully illustrated and wonderfully simple. The story was born out of a Children's Fiction Writing class Catherine took at the En'owkin Center in Penticton. She had to interview two children. One was Zoe, and her story inspired the book. It was fun seeing Zoe(who I see around town all the time) being the star of the show as her aunt told the audience about her book. I can only imagine how cool it is to have a book written about you when you are a kid. Zoe signed books right alongside Catherine too. How cool is that! Theytus Books has asked Catherine to write a sequel to Zoe and the Fawn. She says she'll be talking to Zoe about it and will begin work on it soon.

Kimberly Ann Freel, author of Monster White Lies and Painted Rocks, put on a fun presentation and got the audience thinking about descriptive language with her power point presentation. Then she had everyone on the edge of their seats with a sneak preview of her next novel, Callie of the White Sands. Sounds like it's going to be a good one.

Bea Alden read and showed off illustrations from her South African memoir, Liongold. She is such a sweet lady and I just happened to find her as I followed a lead from a newspaper ad, for another author. The man I called told me about Bea. After some internet research, I gave her a call and she was so kind and well spoken I knew she was going to be great. She certainly didn't disappoint!

Jean Vernon gave an informative travel safety demonstration based on her book, European Adventuring-On a Budget. I learned lots of good travel safety tips. Now if I could just go travel. Jean wrote a column for Mother Earth News for two years too, back when I read the magazine faithfully. Isn't that awesome!

Aline Lesage read from her novel Gaby's Penance, but wouldn't give away the novel's secret; only clues--in French. Oh, to hear he speak in French is just beautiful. Aline just moved here to our little town and it's great to have another writer around to chat with.

Janine Donoho aka Jesse Jayne Smith, my friend of many names, and author of Wildfire, gave an inspiring talk on novel creation. And she helped me pick up the slack getting this event together. I would have been exhausted to the max without her. And then she got me this fabulous gift! A box full of beautiful soaps and lotions and green polka dotted cashmere socks!

Both Theytus Books and CMP Publishing Group put on great displays of their published books. I feel awed that two publishers came and set up shop at our little library event. And their books are so beautiful. I wish I could have bought every book there. Alas, we volunteer coordinators don't make much.

We ended up having about forty people come, which I suppose is less than I was hoping for(the room certainly could have held more people). Still, a decent turn out for a busy day around town(silly me, I scheduled the fair on graduation day). The audience asked many thoughtful questions of each author making the day quite interactive and all the authors had a wonderful time sharing their books and meeting other authors they didn't know lived so close. I'm already thinking about how to do it better next year.