Mr. Valentine at TFOB

Mr. Valentine was busy this last weekend at the Tucson Festival of Books, a mammoth event that combines a writer’s conference complete with workshops, a multitude of readers-meet-author events, and general festivities for all the family.

Last year, over 100,000 people attended the festival—more than 10% of Tucson’s population!  Who says people don’t read these days?

I’m exhausted after traipsing around all day in the hot sun, so this may be a short post—and if it ends with a bunch of gobbbledegook, that’s my forehead hitting the keyboard.

I met scads of friendly authors, including the members of a panel consisting of male romance writers. Perhaps more pertinent to the main content of this website, I also was on a great panel about futuristic, fantasy, and paranormal romance entitled It’s Not All Death, Demons, and Destruction.  Also on the panel:

• Jennifer Greene also writes as Christine Cody and Crystal Green.  She is the author of the dark fantasy/postapocalyptic supernatural Western series Bloodlands. She also writes the urban fantasy Vampire Babylon series and romances
• Nancy Holder is the New York Times best-selling co-author of “Wicked,” “Crusade” and the Wolf Springs Chronicle series, and the author of “Teen Wolf On Fire” and “Buffy: The Making of a Slayer.”
• Gini Koch is the author of the Alien series, which includes “Touched by an Alien,” “Alien Tango,” “Alien in the Family” and “Alien Proliferation

I met even greater scads of great readers.  If any of you are out there, here’s a quick “Glad to have met you!”

All in all, TFOB (as it’s known to people who get tired of mouthing that whole thing, is a great family event.  What are some of your favorite book-related gatherings?

I had lunch on Sunday with David Brin, a science-fiction legend, so this was one of my favorites.  That lunch is worthy of a separate post, however, which I’ll get to in the next couple of days … hopefully before Wednesday, when I jet off to Toronto to visit family.

Family: that was such a big part of TFOB.  If you didn’t attend this year, you really ought to … ought to try to … to … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz