My first author event (Patreon)

I posted about this on social media yesterday, but I have a little bit more to say, and I figured -- who better to say it to?!

I'm so glad I was able to meet so many readers, but especially was excited to meet a few people from patreon. It was really fun to be able to put a face to many of the names that I've seen around here and chat about books, even if the chats were a little brief.

Meeting people in-person is always terrifying to me, but I genuinely had a great time. I think there's something really special about being able to connect face-to-face, especially when a literary community is so solitary. I mean, the beauty of a literary community is that we can all ready and connect (yay, internet) from anywhere. But having a connection and being able to SEE and HEAR that people have connected with something I've produced was really incredible. Especially because my characters live in my head so presently, so it's great to see that resonate with other people, too.

Honestly, I had such a good time that I started talking to Monica about wanting to plan my own sort of event next year! Of course, that's dependent on a handful of things (finding a venue, inviting a few other authors, gauging interest), but I'm very excited about the idea of it. Doing something small and centralized is right up my alley, especially if I can finagle it where I can use a little more time to be able to chat with people about books!

It was really good, though, to do this event to prepare me for next year! In which I have plans to do Queers and Quills in Portland, Oregon as well as GCLS (and... potentially... my own little meetup in/around Boston).

Meeting Roslyn Sinclair, Carrie Byrd, as well as Lori Prince and her wife Marisa was amazing (it was great to hang out with Monica as I do every night, and to hang with Erica Lee as well, but I've met her before!). A huge highlight for me was directing people over to Lori, as a surprising number of people weren't aware she was there! It's a rarity that Monica and I hang out with other sapphic couples, and getting to strike up an in-person friendship with not only sapphic couples, but sapphic couples in our community was such an experience, and I'm still riding on that high.

Anyway, all of this boils down to the fact that -- I told Monica repeatedly leading up to this event that no one was going to come. I was so sure that there would be so few people coming to my table (that's imposter syndrome for ya), but... they did! I know people didn't just go to the event to meet me, of course, but the fact that we, a small group of sapphic authors/narrators, drew such a lovely little crowd in the middle of Pennsylvania was just very... special.

I continually am reminded of reasons why I love being in this community, and that I am so lucky to have such amazing readers standing behind my work, and I appreciate you all so incredibly much.