Peevish Pen

Ruminations on reading, writing, genealogy and family history, rural living, retirement, aging—and sometimes cats.

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Location: Rural Virginia, United States

I'm an elderly retired teacher who writes. Among my books are Ferradiddledumday (Appalachian version of the Rumpelstiltskin story), Stuck (middle grade paranormal novel), Patches on the Same Quilt (novel set in Franklin County, VA), Them That Go (an Appalachian novel), Miracle of the Concrete Jesus & Other Stories, and several Kindle ebooks.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Back From Galax

I'm baaack—home that is. I had a wonderful time at the Galax Book Festival and met lots of interesting folks.

Friday night, I attended the reception at the Chestnut Creek School of the Arts, which was across the street from where the author's tent was. Good food, good speakers, good meeting place!

Sharon from Chapters introduces  speakers: Kathleen Grissom, Sharyn McCrumb, Adam Edwards.


Kathleen told us how she wrote her debut novel, The Kitchen House. She was inspired by some property she owned, and the character's voices told the story to her.

Sharyn and Adam spoke about their collaboration on Faster Pastor, but Sharyn also read from her up-coming novel, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, which will be available on June 22. (I just pre-ordered this novel from Amazon.com.)

On Saturday, the authors were treated to breakfast at the Galax Smokehouse before the festival began. Later, I read from Ferradiddledumday.


Because the wi-fi was so good, a lot of folks had lap-tops with them. Some Twittered and some posted to Facebook during the festival. I'm glad I'd brought my trusty MacBook. You can read Cara Modisett's tweets from the festival here (but you'll need to scroll down to the June 12th tweets). Michele Young-Stone's blogpsot is here.


We had a pretty good crowd until the storm hit in early afternoon. I had just been interviewed for WVTF by Cara  (who, by the way, wrote the text for a wonderful book, The Blue Ridge Parkway Impressions) when the wind started blowing and soon rain fell. Everyone scrambled to cover their books and keep displays from blowing away. Some visitors took shelter under the awning.


After the storm, some of the vendors regrouped. Others closed up shop and departed.



After hearing that storms were forecast throughout the region, I decided to leave Galax a few hours early. I really didn't want to be caught on a winding mountain road if a strong storm hit, so I came home via Rt. 221 through Roanoke. This route was a bit longer, and I drove through rain most of the way, but I missed the worst weather. I heard parts of Roanoke had been pounded by a storm and many lost power.

At home, John said we'd gotten a thunderstorm. He thought lightning might have struck close by.

He'd also misplaced a couple of the cats I'd entrusted to his care. Fortunately, I was able to quickly find them.

All in all, despite stormy weather and misplaced cats, I had a pretty good mini-vacation.
~

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

We had strong winds and rain here at our house but no damage and no power outages as so many in the area did. I'm glad you were able to avoid the brunt of the storm and make it home safely!

Di

12:40 AM  

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