Wahoo! Wednesday - combined with the Armchair BEA post of the day

For anyone new to my blog, Wahoo! Wednesday is just a day to count my blessings and talk about things that make me happy or good things that are happening in my life. It's a feature I came up with years ago, dropped for a while and have recently revived.

Let's start with the A-BEA business, though.

Today, we're supposed to talk about networking. When I read that, I went totally blank. And, then I read Alyce's post and realized I have, in fact, done some networking in a matter of speaking. Let's start with my interview of Simon Van Booy. I was writing for Estella's Revenge ezine when I read the Turtle Point Press version of Simon's wonderful book of short stories, The Secret Lives of People in Love. I was so blown away that I asked to interview him. And, then one thing led to another and I ended up meeting up with Simon in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here's a reprint of my interview of Simon Van Booy in 2007.

While I was in town, I also met up with the fabulous Colleen Gleason, the author of a number of romance series books. At the time, I was really into her Victoria Gardella Vampire series. I can't seem to find my interview post, but here's a link to the photos I took of Colleen and Simon.

I don't do many interviews because I don't consider myself all that hot at coming up with insightful questions, but I've also chatted with and interviewed Patricia Wood, the author of the fabulous, Orange short-listed Lottery. I could have met up with Pat when I was in Hawaii but I neglected to tell her I was coming. Darn.

Last year, I finally met up with my first blogging buddy, the very awesome and totally perky Carrie of Care's Online Book Club. That's Carrie in Charleston, South Carolina, at right. She and a writer friend from my online writing group years stayed at a Bed & Breakfast and spent our days touring the town, riding boats, eating good food and chat-chat-chatting. It was absolutely wonderful -- actually, my first buddy trip, apart from writers' conferences.

In the fall, Carrie mentioned that Simon Van Booy was going to be speaking at the Boston Public Library and that led to another trip to hang out with Carrie, this time in Massachusetts. We drove in to Boston on a rainy day, had coffee with Simon and then attended his reading. That's Simon with Carrie, at left.

More recently, I managed to meet Alex George, author of A Good American. I already linked to my photo of the delightful Alex George at Lemuria Books, but here 'tis, in case you missed it.

Whew! Much more hanging out with bloggers and authors than I realized. I need to do more of that, definitely. Maybe a book festival in the future?

In other wahoo news:

We have placed an offer on a house! I am terrified but excited that we finally found something we're interested in. We won't hear back from the seller till tonight.

Book wahoos!

I'm reading slowly because we've been back and forth a lot (the house we're interested in is 30 miles away from our current home) but enjoying my reading. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada is an amazing WWII novel. Hans Fallada is the pen name of a German who died in 1947 and the story is about the resistance in Germany. It's going to take me quite a while to finish it, since I'm not finding much reading time and it's over 600 pages long but it's definitely a fantastic read, which is a huge wahoo! I've had trouble finding books that really grab me, lately.

Wahooey read #2 just arrived in the mail: Forbidden by Syrie James & Ryan M. James. It's a nice, light paranormal YA that I won from Alyce. Loving it, so far!

The other books in my sidebar are languishing but they're both excellent and I hope to get back to them soon. I need more hours in my day!

Crazy cat wahoos:

When I saw Isabel squeezing herself under the dresser, I grabbed my camera. I had no idea what drew her there, but I always try to capture the cat antics. So, I got a shot of her working her way into this 3" high opening. She has feather bones and is quite thin. There's no way Fiona could possibly do this.

It turned out Isabel had located a jingle ball. She batted it around beneath the dresser for a time and then grabbed it in her teeth and brought it out to play with. So cute!!

What wahooey things are happening in your world?

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Emailbookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.