Meet the Authors - Day 5 of 31 Days of Blogging

A couple of weeks ago I went to St. Louis with two girlfriends to see two of my favorite authors; Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton . Of course they both write vampire novels so they are right up my alley. Hamilton lives in St. Louis and her Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series is set in St. Louis mostly as well. Harris lives in Arkansas and her Sookie Stackhouse series was the basis for the HBO series True Blood. The first season of the show was pretty true to the first book and even used a lot of the dialogue. After that, the show pretty much went off the rails, in a good way I think, and now they are basically two separate but equally wonderful entities. Hamilton and True Blood are not for the faint of heart. Luckily, my heart is strong.

Both ladies participated in this author's evening at Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis which is down by the Arch. It was an awesome church and it was packed. It is an Episcopal church and the Dean of the church welcomed everyone and gave us some history of the cathedral. He was so kind and enthusiastic it made you want to go to church there some Sunday just to please him.

The event was a fundraiser for the St. Louis Public Library. Tickets were only $28 and you got to choose a signed book from one of the two authors. I chose Charlaine's The Sookie Stackhouse Companion.

We got second row seats which were awesome. Both authors stood on a little stage up front and instead of a program they just answered fan questions for an hour and a half. I sat next to a very nice lady named Beth Sorensen who just published her second mystery book. She was there for a Mystery Writer's conference.

I got in line to ask a question but someone in front of me asked it before I made my way to the microphone. It was a fun night. I was a little nervous because usually when I go to a concert of someone I really like, I'm disappointed in them in person and then I don't listen to them anymore. Thankfully that was not the case with this event. They were both great. I wasn't disappointed at all.

In fact, it just made me want to go to more events like that.

There's a Book Lover's Convention in Chicago in April and I am really thinking about going instead of driving Route 66. They have lots of authors I like there and writing conferences as well. I'll probably wait until the last minute to decide so we'll see.

I'm on the hunt for the next opportunity.