Lunch with Class of 2K8 Debut Novelists and Other Friends

I’ve spent the past few days mostly in my writing cave, wrestling with blank pages that I made a little prettier or at least un-blank. Maybe the quiet days made me feel especially primed to be social, or maybe it was just the wonderful people that Michele Barker got together as part of a mini tour for some of the debut novelists of the Class of 2K8 classof2K8. While they were in western Massachusetts to talk about some of the many people it takes to put out one book, Michele arranged a lunch where some other readers and writers, including me, Melissa Stewart http://www.melissa-stewart.com, D. Dina Freedman d_dina_friedman and Nancy Castaldo naturespeak joined them to talk about writing and marketing. I took a picture of the Class of 2k8 members present, and their books. I hope to write a bit about these shiny new books, all aimed for teens, in the upcoming weeks; we’ll see how organized and un-backlogged my reading can get. And how much my white paper wants to talk back to me. Meanwhile, I’m happy to have made a few new LJ friends! (we were all saying how great this place is).

Here is, from left: M.P. Barker mpbarker, Marissa Doyle marissa_doyle, Ellen Boordem, Courtney Sheinmel courtneywrites, and N.A. Nelson lucky_life.

And — yay! — their first novels! (which I so cleverly lined up in order to match the faces)