Austin Author Event! And a Giveaway

Yesterday we got to meet some amazing authors at the Austin Author Event hosted by Vilma’s Book Blog.  A group from our book club made the 2 and a half hour trek to Austin, Texas. We left promptly at 8am and that is when the shenanigans began!!! Our first stop was Buc-ee’s where Julie met her first celeb of the day. I took a pic of course! Armed with a full booty of junk food, we piled back into the car and were back on the road.  Next we had a near death experience when Julie spotted Miss Pearl the Squirrel and decided that we had to have a our picture taken with her.  As you can probably guess from this post, we are into the pic taking! Our skilled driver (love you, Lynn!!!!) expertly applied the breaks to a perform a U-turn maneuver the likes of which would make a nascar driver pee his pants.  It was worth it in the end as we all got to pose with the giant plastic squirrel.  (Click on any of the pics for an enlarged view).

  

  

After a very exciting 2 plus hours of driving, we arrived at the Omni hotel in downtown Austin at 11am.  (This was the soonest we were permitted to line up.) We got to meet the lovely Monica, a fellow book blogger from the Houston area, and invited her to freeze with us in line. The line itself wasn’t too bad and, while I am not sure where they came from, we were offered cupcakes while we waited. Not bad.

 

The first author we got to meet was Colleen Hoover.  She is so amazing. (It is from her book Hopeless that we got the idea for our blog’s name.)  She had a special guest with her. HOLDER!!!!!!! Griffin Peterson, the cover model for CoHo’s newest book, Losing Hope graciously autographed books and took pics with his adoring fans.  Let me just say it now ladies, he is pretty.  Like so pretty, it makes it hard to breathe. I am NOT typically a shy person. In fact, you usually can’t shut me up. What can I tell you? I got a lot to say!!! But I could NOT utter one intelligible word to this beautiful boy. You know the real kicker?  He is nice and humble and doesn’t even complain when a random goober of a girl like yours truly attempts to feel him up (upon prompting by author, Kay Manis, and fellow book club members. Thank you, Kay!)  The first pic I was too shy to even put my arm around him as I did with Colleen. In the 2nd pic, with the prompting of lookers-on, I not only put my arm around him, but sorta kinda maybe a little bit felt him up, too. He was a sweet enough to play along, throwing out a chuckling “oooh baby”. Such a  great sport. Griffin, if you ever read this, sorry for leaving my fingerprints all over your sunglasses, but they kinda got in the way of my aforementioned grope. or pet. I guess it was more of a pet than a grope. Did anyone tell you that you smelled nice, cuz you did….le sigh…..oh, off topic, btw, he’s a singer/songwriter out of Nashville, Tennessee and I’ve download his two singles and they are great. You can download them for $.99/each here. So far there are only two to download. Make an album already Griffin! Sheesh!

 

The next author we met was the quirky and silly Molly McAdams. I am excited to read her book, Taking Chances as I’ve heard many great things about it, but have yet to get the opportunity to read any of her books.  Will be remedying that soon!

 

After that we met Tina Reber. She is a riot!!!! I have not had the chance to read her books either, but I purchased Love Unscripted for her to sign.  First she signed books, then she had me signing books, (not for reals).  She was a blast to talk to and I can’t wait to start reading my new book. And Tina, if you read this, I hope you got the chance to meet some real cowboys while visiting us in Texas! They just don’t have those in PA! (I used to live there, I KNOW!) 

 

 The author I was most looking forward to meeting at this particular event, Rebecca Donovan was the next author we chatted up.  I love love love a million times, LOVE her Breathing Series.  We discussed the audio book version and she asked how I liked them. I LOVE THEM!!!! Kate Rudd, (narrator)is amazeballs!  I will listen to her read anything. She could read the owner’s manual to my Honda Civic and I would listen with rapt attention (and probably learn something new about my car!) Her voice is perfect.  She really did a great job with both Emma and Evan’s voices.  Rebecca told me she is currently working on Jonathan’s story. YAY! I asked her if he could be redeemed and quite seriously she replied, “I do not know.”

After Rebecca Donovan, I met, quite accidently, author Michele Scott.  Okay, here I have a confession to make. I was going to skip over her. I had to chose a few authors to skip because I simply cannot buy every book out there and I had never read any of her books.  But let’s be honest, I was not going to read her book because it had a cover of a horse on it. I know! I am so prejudiced! If there is one thing that I cannot stand, it is a poorly written book featuring horses.  People, if you don’t know horses, don’t make them a central theme in your book or this reader is NOT buying! She has more than one book, but the one I always recall seeing has a close-up of a girl and a horse’s face on the cover.  I was eyeing the book suspiciously and decided to ask the million dollar question.  This was the moment that could forever seal the deal with this author and myself…” Do you have horses?” I asked.  “I have 9!” she replied.  “I have 2!” came my breathless response.  She asked me if had ever heard of Professional’s Choice brand as that was her family’s company and I did a little girl squeel on the inside. I have lots of Professional’s Choice products for my horse. I showed her a picture of my horse wearing Professional’s Choice sports medicine boots and then she showed me pics of her horses and what with one thing and another, I made a new friend, swapped emails, compared horsey pics, She does 3 day eventing, I trail ride and am learning to barrel race. She was thrown off a horse a while back and got a concussion. I was thrown and broke my pelvis. We talked overcoming the fear of riding again, we talked bell boots, (I like Professional’s Choice Quick wrap bell boots) we talked jumping, dressage, and the adrenaline rush that is riding. It was without a doubt the coolest part of the day. Authors are awesome. Horse people are awesome. Authors that are horse people= rare = doubly awesome! Oh, and, best part? I bought a new book, Silent Harmony, YAY!

At this point in the proceedings I lost my co-blogger, Julie, somewhere. Apparently horsey talk is not for everyone (just as writing books with horses is should not be for everyone) and I found her at the next author table where we got to meet Abbi Glines. I would love to sometime do a readathon with others where we devote like 2 weeks and read all of this woman’s wonderful love stories. I bought the first book in her Too Far Series (which apparently I already had on kindle! DANG IT! I should have gotten book 2 in that series!!!) I did not get to visit with her as much as I would have liked, as I was busy explaining to a fellow book clubber why Beau is one of my all time favorite book boyfriends ever. (This is Abbi’s fave, too, btw) Julie and I get to see Abbi again on Friday at Katy Budget Books for the Atria Indie Book Tour and I will be buying more of her books!

The next author was Tammara Webber. This was my second time meeting her and I was able to get the fourth book of her Between the Lines series signed. So now I have all five of her books signed and all over her audio  books as well.  I always enjoy talking to Tammara. She is such a class act. I love her books!  She even was fun to take pics with… we giggled like silly girls, but finally managed to get a decent pic where both sets of eyes were open and mouths resembled normal smiles. LOL. (both sets of eyes meaning my eyes and her eyes, NO she does not have 2 sets of eyes… that I know of….). She does however, rock the purple hair… its hidden and subtle, but somehow perfect.  Like I said, a real classy lady. She is one of my favorite authors of all time.

  

    After meeting with Tammara we fangirled over Holder, I mean Griffin, again, and snapped some more pics like we were the freaking paparazzi. I would apologize, but honestly, it was Cora Carmack’s fault.  If her line wasn’t so long, we would never had had the opportunity to ogle for quite so long. So you see, Griff, blame Cora! Go ahead. Do it. Tell her Rose said it was all her fault. Wait. Maybe don’t do that. Cora Carmack actually DID remember me from the last time we met in Dallas and yeah, so nix the telling her I said it was her fault. I mean, you can still blame her, but just sneaky like, you know, behind her back and all that.  I bought Cora’s latest book, Finding It and look forward to reading it soon. It is at the top of my TBR list right now.  Cora is so personable and funny. Just don’t get her talking until after she signs your book, or she just might sign the wrong name!  Btw, if there is a Cora Carmack fan out there by the name of Augusta, Cora really really liked your name. Almost, but not quite as much as she liked my fellow book club friend, Iris’s name.. haha teasing! We were talking to Cora and totally distracting her and she started to sign Iris’ book “Augusta” and yeah… ops!  Another cool tid bit about Cora? Her signature on my Author Signature Board was one of her earliest autographs… she did not even really know what her signature was going to look like, but she signed anyways. 🙂 This time, she placed a heart by her name.  Sweet.

 

    

All in all the day was a blast. I got 13 books and Julie got 4 books.  Super Super Fun! Authors are the best.  Cover models rock. And bloggers and book nerds make for the best kinds of friends!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Giveaway:

Okay, so who is ready for the giveaway??? So we have one paperback copy of Losing Hope signed by both Colleen Hoover and Griffin Peterson to give away!!! (U.S. only, sorry!!!) Enter using Rafflecopter below.  We also have a ton of book swag the authors offered up for giving away.  If you would like to win some of this swag, leave us a comment below and we will pick winners randomly. Good luck!

  

 

 

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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