Awesome Day – Met Sarra Cannon and Holly Ward

I LOVE Sarra Cannon’s books. That woman can write a story that will suck you in and leave you wanting more! We’ve chatted over the past six to eight months, we’ve Facebook’d and Tweeted. She really is such an amazing person. She’s attending RWA13# in Atlanta this weekend and since I happen to live very close to Atlanta I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to meet her in person.

This summer is going to be the summer of my heroes! First I got to meet Addison Moore at UtopYA which was amazing! I also met so many wonderful ladies that are so much fun that I can’t wait to spend time with them again. Now I get to meet Sarra Cannon in all her beautiful glory.

Unfortunately for her I spotted her in the lobby right after she had been driving all day. She was tired and really wanted to just go get ready but Mercury was still in retrograde rendering my brain pretty much useless. I walked up to her as though we were old friends and stood there — just staring. Honestly I was speechless. Which for those of you who know me you can pick your jaws up off the floor, but it’s true. I couldn’t talk for a solid 60 seconds. She introduced me to her husband and her adorable baby. He’s the sweetest little thing.

Sarra handled it like a pro, even actually knew who I was. I was completely bewildered by her magical powers, but then she reminded me that I have a profile picture. I have a pretty distinct look, there’s no running away from this mug! I’m sure she’s already handed my photo over to the police for fear that one day she’ll have to file a restraining order against me for fan-girling all over her. But I promise Sarra, I’m harmless – you just amaze me.

When the signing finally began, my brain wasn’t working much better, although I was pretty fast on my feet when my friend spilled water on Katie McGarry’s books, I sacrificed my tote bag to save the day. Although I must admit an umbrella would have been more absorbent. But hey I tried. Incidentally, Katie McGarry is so incredibly sweet. I can’t wait to read her book.

I made my way to Sarra’s table and got my books. Her parents were there and in all the chaos Sarra still managed to be wonderful and gracious. It was a bit crammed in that place. Then her friend Holly came to see her. She introduced me to to her too like we were old buddies. It was sublime, it was like I belonged. Sadly I’m a strange enough person there are rarely places I actually belong.

Now I spend a lot of time on Kindle Boards getting tips from authors and seeing what readers have to say. On occasion I’ll chime in. There are a few indies on there who are amazing about helping the little newbie indies. Helping with planning and strategising. Being there when we’ve blurbed all over ourselves – badly. Helping us with our terrible self-made book covers and really being a huge help overall. They really give back to the indie author community and I fear that a wishy washy post on KB thanking them will never be enough.

Well as it would happen one of the authors who is incredibly supportive of all of us baby authors is H.M. Ward. Admittedly I haven’t had a chance to read any of her books since I started reading her posts on KB. Totally on the TBR list though. As I was standing and talking to Sarra and her friend Holly, who I had already accosted with my author card that contains my book info were just chatting. Holly’s badge was obscured by the lighting and when it shifted I was able to see her name. Remember my brain was hanging out with Mercury in retrograde so it took a minute for me to put things together and rattled the words in my brain “Holly Ward, that sounds familiar.” That’s when I realized and I kind of blurted out after talking with her for like 5 minutes, “Wait, you’re H.M. Ward!” The clarification was necessary, because I’m sure she wasn’t aware :\. She confirmed my epiphany and I started gushing thanking her for all she does for indie authors. At that moment I felt the need to be the voice of the little just starting out indie authors everywhere and told her how much we appreciate her.

Then I figured I should make an exit fast before there were dual restraining orders out on me.

The long and short of is that I feel so honored and thankful to have been able to tell her “thank you” face to face. I know that if I actually manage to sell a hundred books (that aren’t friends and family) it will be in part because of her advice!

Overall fantastic day! I met three wonderful and incredibly gracious ladies who amaze me and of course didn’t manage to get a photo with any of the beautiful ladies like I would have loved to. But thankfully Mercury is no longer in retrograde.

 

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