Author Life, she said, modestly.

I swear I was not lurking at the Barnes & Noble.

​I was there to take a photo of my novel in the wild.  It's perhaps endlessly thrilling to see the thing you've worked on out there sitting on a library shelf, a bookshelf, someone's hands...

But truly, I was NOT lurking. A pair of young women drifted past the table of stacked books, and one, Rachel, picked up my book.

"Squeee! You just picked up my book!" I said.
"Wha?" she said, not yet fully alarmed by my obvious excitement.
"Look on the back!"
She flipped the book over and compared the author photo with my face. "It's you," she said.
"I know!" I said, then, because emotions: "I've got goosebumps!"
"I picked it up because of the cover."
"It's beautiful," I agreed, without the slightest self-consciousness.
"And it's about sisters!"
Were they sisters, I asked, indicating Rachel and her book-browsing friend.
"No. But we both have sisters." Rachel gave me a shrewd look and added, "Is this inspired by a real sister?"
"Yes," I said, truthfully. "But my charismatic older sister is much nicer than that one."
"Oooh," Rachel said. "I'm a charismatic older sister."

And that, gentle reader, is how I accidentally strong-armed an unsuspecting passer-by into purchasing a copy, as well as how I ended up signing a short stack of books at the Barnes & Noble bookstore this afternoon.

Thank you https://www.facebook.com/bntampafl Barnes & Noble South Tampa. And thank you, Rachel! 

In other authorial news, I was invited to map the settings for She Taught Me Everything into a nifty little app called Squirl.  
Squirl is designed to help users, as its tagline announces "Discover the places described in books."

You can visualize where a book is set. So, is Brooklyn Heights your hometown? What snippet from the book did this author choose to go with the pin on the map for Brooklyn Heights?   

You can check the map for books set in any given place—a special treat for bookish folk: to see the locations we've read about.  Or, if you're built this way, it's a way to pre-view spots before visiting by finding books to read that are set in a specific spot.

I love this idea, and hope other authors and their publicity departments will pile on!

Thanks ​https://squirl.co/