Autumn road show

Late September is Goldilocks weather in Asheville, North Carolina — too late to be hot, too early to be cold. Peak leaf season in that part of the Blue Ridge Mountains won’t happen for another couple of weeks, but there ought to be a good range of color, since we’ve had a relatively dry summer. If you’re in the neighborhood, check out the beautiful Biltmore House and Gardens, drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, or stroll around the funky downtown, with its vintage clothing shops, craft jewelry and Appalachian music. But come Saturday night September 24th, at 7 p.m., stop what you’re doing and converge on Malaprop’s, one of the finest independent bookstores in the Southeast. I’ll be there with Karin Kallmaker talking books, especially my latest (Trial By Fury) and hers (Captain of Industry). We’d love to meet you all and sign books, and we’d be really grateful if you’d bring a few bucks to spend at the store. In fact, for every book of mine you buy at Malaprop’s, I’ll donate $5 to Equality NC, the organization that’s fighting the state’s discriminatory law, HB-2.

Okay, so let’s suppose you can’t make it all the way to Asheville. What are you up to the next day, Sunday September 25th? How about joining us at the LGBT Center in downtown Raleigh between 1 and 3? And by us, I mean Kallmaker and me, of course. But we’ll also have some friends in tow — my fellow Tar Heel authors D. Jackson Leigh, VK Powell, Rebecca Swartz and Ann McMan. We’re putting together a panel you don’t want to miss, and we’ll have a few books for sale too.

What’s that? You can’t come because you live in Texas? Have I got a surprise for you! On October 18th, I’ll be in Dallas for the Women With Pride book club. Trust me, Sandy Thornton really knows how to throw a book club, and it’s especially fitting that I’ll be talking about Trial By Fury, since she won an auction at GCLS in 2015 and shows up as a character in that book.

That’s all that’s on my calendar for now, but I’m open to other events if they’re feasible. I might be in Michigan come November, and I’ll surely get down to Miami this winter. Kallmaker doesn’t know it yet, but I’m heading to the Bay Area in February. Maybe we can do this again.

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Book news: I’m still plugging away on my work-in-progress. And I still like it. No, really. Romantic suspense … dramatic fiction. I can’t decide what to call it. It’s not on Bella’s schedule yet, but look for it 2017. Working title — A Moment of Weakness.