June 6, 2008

It's barely a month until the publication date for Findings and I am one busy woman. I've been scheduling signings and media, but I'm nowhere near finished with that. The manuscript for the next Faye Longchamp mystery, Floodgates, is due in November. And I'm ramping up an addition to my writing business. I'm getting an increasing number of invitations to do speaking engagements and to teach writing classes, so I've decided to get organized about it. I've signed with a speaker's bureau that books speakers for educational audiences called http://connectingauthors.com . I'm listed on http://authorbystate.blogspot.com/ and I'm also still working with personal contacts who call me directly to speak to their groups. I've put more information elsewhere on the website here.

I'm also starting a business called Evans Writing Consultations to expand my ability to teach aspiring writers. I've enjoyed teaching since my first job out of graduate school, teaching math and physics. The subject is different but the personal contact is the same, and I really enjoy the balance that teaching gives to the writing life, which can be a little solitary at times. To make the accounting easy and safe for my students, I was advised by my children (always the best source of technical advice) that I should just start an Ebay store. People can pick a course or a service, click on a link, pay through Paypal, and the business activities are done, so that we can start on the fun part--learning to produce fiction and non-fiction that an editor will want to buy. You can read more about it here.

In the meantime, the early reviews of Findings are fabulous. I've posted several of them on the What People Are Saying page. I have to say that my favorite review came from Library Journal, which gave the book a starred review and said, "This is a series that deserves more attention than it garners." That made me smile.
I'm creating my usual frenetic travel schedule. I currently have signings scheduled in Gainesville, Orlando, St. Augustine, and Tampa, Florida; Wetumpka and Montgomery, Alabama; Hattiesburg, Vicksburg, and West Point, Mississippi; Baltimore, Maryland; and Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I have radio interviews in Gainesville and Tampa, FL; South Bend, Indiana; and New York City. The Gainesville paper is doing a feature article this Sunday, and Mississippi Magazine and the Florida Humanities Council's magazine, Forum, will also being doing features. And there will be more signings and media appearances to come. My schedule is posted on the Schedule of Appearances page. Please come out and see me if I'm coming to your town.