Almost Famous…

Who knew?

So I took my kids to the 8th Annual Teen Book Festival at Nazareth College here in Rochester this past weekend. They volunteer to support the authors as they interact with the kids and readers throughout the day. My wife was out of town, and I planted myself on my butt in a WiFi alcove near the café and proceeded to write. All told, I churned out over 7,000 words that day – which may be a personal best (it’s at least in the top five).

And I probably would’ve done more, except that something sort of unusual and kinda cool happened.

I was typing away, when a lady I’d never met before sat down beside me, reading her Kindle. There were also some teens sitting across the alcove that I spent a little time chatting with–enough to distract me from my keyboard. At any rate, as I typed, I happened to glance at the woman’s Kindle (idle, purely nosy curiosity), and I noticed a symbol on the top of the page she was reading – a kind of swirly-gig that looked exactly like the scene break swirly-gig used in The Lost Scrolls. I thought, “Now that’s odd…” So I looked a little closer and read, “Dr. Jonathan Munro…”

Stunned. Absolutely stunned.

I said, “You’re reading my book!”

She said, “I know. That’s why I sat down beside you. I didn’t want to interrupt your writing, though.” Then she told me that she’d even facebooked the fact that she was sitting down beside me as I wrote while she read my book.

Wow.

We had a marvelous conversation. Her name is Deb, and she works at the Phelps Community Library. Make a long story short, she suggested an invitation to come do an author reading at the library sometime in the near future, and we’ve begun connecting via email toward that end.

She totally made my day. To hear from someone I know that likes my books is pretty cool, but to hear it from a stranger who just happens to sit down beside me? Even more so.