In five days, the authors are going to be loose! That's right, local authors from around Central Florida are going to be signing books and meeting fans in downtown Mount Dora.
Authors in the Park will take place Sunday, Dec 16th from 2PM to 6PM at the Mount Dora Community Bldg Green Room (520 N. Baker, Mt. Dora, FL).Why is it called
Authors in the Park if they are in a building? Well, this is our first event and we did not want to take a chance on the weather. We are literally across the street from well-known Donnelly Park and we will have a Welcome Booth set up outside, along with live music performed by the Round Lake Christian Church Youth Band.
Inside, we will have 9 authors representing a huge variety of genres for all ages. There is absolutely something for everyone.
We will also be an official Baby DJ drop off location, as heard on XL 106.7 FM. Who knows, maybe one of your favorite on-air personalities will put in an appearance!
Here is the amazing part: Local Mount Dora businesses, supporting the arts, have donated close to $1000 in gift certificates and merchandise to be used in our gift basket raffle. That means we will have 10 baskets with almost $100 worth of gifts in each. Winning is simple, but you have to attend to win. For every $5 you spend with one of the
Authors in the Park, you get one raffle entry. Even if you don't win a basket, you still win with a great book!
Check out the authors scheduled for Sunday:
Janet Beasley
Julie Compton
Jean E. Lane
Amy I. Long
Mark Miller
Theresa Oliver
Amy Sellers
C. Kevin Thompson
Rebecca Wilson-Shore
Can you believe that talent? Who would have thought so many gifted authors live right next door?
Here's some of the fine print. The event is presented by
JLB Creatives and
MillerWords.com. It is sponsored by the Mount Dora Library Association (
www.MountDoraLibrary.org). We would like to thank the City of Mount Dora Parks & Rec Department for their excellent cooperation. We would also like to thank all of the local businesses that have generously donated to our gift basket raffle:
Amy Sellers Art Gallery, Barrel of Books and Games, Copacabana Cuban Cafe, Cupcake Delights, Debbie's Dog Treats, The Frog and Monkey, Gold in Art Jewelers, High Five Frozen Yogurt, Home & Garden Treasures, KaDee Kay Gourmet Kitchen Products, Ken's Place, Long & Scott's Farm, The Lost Parrot, Maggie's Attic, Merrill's Market, Mt. Dora Veterinary Clinic, Mt. Plymouth IGA, Oakwood Smokehouse, The Olde Clock Shoppe, One Flight Up, Permanent Solution Hair Salon, Race Car Diner, Stoneybrooke Publix, Whispering Winds, The Windsor Rose Tea Room
Please visit
to learn more about the authors and our supporters.
Check out the Facebook event page
and let us know you're coming!
What more can I say? We hope to see you there!
Merry Christmas
and Happy Holidays!
Okay, here is a fun guy, witty and sharp. I had the pleasure of meeting Richard at the annual Florida Writer's Association banquet. We shared a few laughs and talked shop (writers do that, ya know). So, I tell Richard that I write fiction, mostly fantasy. He tells me he writes metafiction.
What? What is that?
Oh, it's fiction that is aware of itself. As the kids say these days, "Mind=Blown". I must be living a sheltered life, I've never heard of it before that night. It sounds fascinating and I want to try it. In the meantime, here is Richard telling about his novel and a little about himself.
MINDWARP, A Novella …And Other Strange Tales
A committee of muses sits about the living room of my brain, discussing matters of no great import. A motley group they are, having just finished their pizzas—one pepperoni, one vegetarian, one combo—hold the anchovies.
“Why in the world is he doing this?” asks the chair-muse, finger-flicking crumbs from her robe….
Thus begins a journey into the mind of a “deranged author” (it says so on the back cover!) and his collection of short fiction, MindWarp, a Novella…And Other Strange Tales. Kirkus Reviews, the self-described “World’s Toughest Book Critics,” described the novella and accompanying eight short stories by author Richard Hébert this way:
This scintillating collection…uses offbeat character studies to wrestle with snaky issues of identity and self-knowledge. Hébert’s loquacious, usually anonymous narrators are obsessed with penetrating the riddle of the people around them.
In “MindWarp,” a nameless writer battens for inspiration on Guy, a working-class barfly who is almost elemental in his beaten-down ordinariness. Things get complicated when Guy begins an affair with the feisty, appealing Yolanda; the couple pushes back against the writer’s determination to “warp” their reality into a fictional celebration of heroic failure—until the writer himself seems to become the unstable, increasingly desperate creation of his own story.
Quirky, opaque figures abound in other stories; “Ana, Always,” about a Yugoslavian youth’s efforts to fathom the tragic mystery of a middle-aged woman, is a meditation on family and exile; “Silence,” a somewhat affected tale about a guilt-burdened war veteran who acquiesces in his wife’s affair with an ex-comrade, finds power in the evanescent fracturing of its hero’s personality. Only in “Azazel,” a comic gem about a mythical desert herdsmen who tends the world’s scapegoats until the powers that be decide he needs a ritzy California estate in which to receive humanity’s atonement, do we meet a man who thoroughly knows himself.
The author delights in mind games; the title novella is as much a commentary on the conundrums of fictional representation as it is a fiction. Fortunately, Hébert’s writerly conceits are rescued by the quality of his prose; his deadpan realism, mordant wit and acute powers of description ground his flights of abstraction in the soil of experience.
A beguiling blend of high-concept narrative and old-school literary chops.
Kirkus subsequently named the collection to its top 50 list of 2011 “Indie” books.
__________
Hébert is a former award winning investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize nominee; a media relations manager and consultant; a nationally published magazine feature and documentary film writer, and world traveler. Many of his works of fiction, including the stories in MindWarp, were inspired by incidents encountered during his travels in Europe, Africa and North, Central and South America. He currently also writes a political blog – Richard’s Take – from his retirement home in St. Augustine, Florida. His other published books include a memoir, Life Is Good; a novel, The Questing Beast, and Highways to Nowhere: The Politics of Urban Transportation.
It is also available in paperback, BN Nook, and directly from the publisher,
Author House.
Not really.
At least, not yet.
With mega-book chains closing their doors (Borders) and online booksellers battling for eBook domination, authors are faced with the daunting task of connecting with their readers. How do we get our print books out there? How do we connect with our digital readers?
Here's the thing: I love to write.
Along with that, I truly enjoy meeting fans and aspiring authors. So, I will take every opportunity to get out there and meet some great people. One of my favorite activities is visiting classrooms. I have found that teachers these days do an incredible job of motivating kids to read. When an author walks into the classroom, that is a springboard for their hungry little minds!
Teachers: Please send me emails, I would love to come to your class, at any grade level. If I can't drive to you, then I can use Skype or Google video chat.
Another fun suggestion is that my books can be used for fund raisers. I've done it before. It's unique and leaves a lasting impression.
Take a look at what I've got coming up:
April 18 - Lake County Library System: Local Authors Day - The Lake County Library System is proud to announce the second program celebrating local authors and their books. The Spring Local Authors’ Day will be held in the Lady Lake Public Library on Wednesday, April 18th from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. In addition to meeting some of the best authors from around Florida, participants can enter for a prize drawing sponsored by the Friends of the Lady Lake Public Library. http://tinyurl.com/btkfhvf
May 7 & 8 - Great Wolf Lodge (Charlotte, NC): Home School Week - Comfort Publishing is once again parterning with
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