Some Book Expo afterthoughts

Well, Book Expo America is over and it was an educational experience. It was the first time I'd ever been to a major book show and, as I walked up and down the aisles of the main hall taking in the millions and millions of books on display, I felt extremely fortunate that my novel has not only released in paperback as from last Friday but that it even got published in the first place. There are just so many books being published and it took the enormity and cacophony of the show to bring this message home personally.

I would like to thank MJ Rose, author of The Halo Effect and other novels and books of nonfiction for inviting me to be part of this year's Emerging Voices line-up. She is truly an inspiring individual, a woman who not only writes but also gives freely of her time to help first novelists such as myself get exposure to a wider audience at a critical time in our careers. As I watched her chair the reading I couldn't help wonder where she gets the time and energy to do so much.

And I would also like to thank Jonathan Harper at the Lambda Literary Foundation because, through him, I came to the attention of some folks at TIME,Inc and have been invited to read from my novel and talk about the writing life at their glamorous corporate head office in NYC along with Alison Smith, Stacey dErasmo and Susan Stinson authors of Name all the Animals, A Seahorse Year and Venus of Chalk respectively. The group hosting the reading is called OUT and they are gay and lesbian employees who organize readings for their fellow co-workers at TIME. I am extremely excited to participate and, on Friday afternoon, I bumped into a very excited Alexandria (who's on the TIME group's steering committee) at my publisher's BEA booth and she informed me that so far over one hundred straight, gay and lesbian employees are attending the event.

Her news made my heart truly sing because this is how life should unfurl. I am sick of the Christian Right and conservatives with hatred in their hearts attempting to divide and supplant a version of America they feel should exist by wreaking havoc and destroying the lives of other decent Americans. Their attitudes and vision have nothing to do with the God I know and believe in, and is quite frankly an expression of evil in my judgment. So I tip my hat to Alexandria and her group at TIME and to the many, many other varied groups in the United States seeking to be positive and inclusive and build a better society for ALL Americans.

[technorati: Book Expo America, Time Magazine, Lambda Literary Foundation, MJ Rose]