St. George Book Festival

This weekend I had an amazing time at the St. George Book Festival.

I was given the chance to teach a class on coming up with story ideas that work. I was so excited to teach the class.

Thursday I headed down with my brother-in-law and he dropped me off at my hotel room. After a delicious dinner at the Black Bear Diner, I went back to my room and edited up a storm. I'm working on edits for a few books right now, so I took full advantage of the silent room.

Did I say silent? I may have also watched several Halloween shows on Disney Channel while I was editing...

Friday morning I headed over to Dixie State University for a day of classes. I wrote tons of notes on characters, description, symbols, storyboarding, and on and on. The teachers were excellent and I was anxious to use what I'd learned in my own writing.

My class went well. I worried I wouldn't have anyone show up, but I had a good class size. They were great to work with and thanks to James Duckett, I got my powerpoint to work. My first one! I was very proud of it...

Anyway, we did a few prompts, where the class wrote a story from a first line I gave them. I had a few people share after time was up and I loved how diverse everyone's stories were. I just hope everyone was as happy with the class as I was...

After the last class of the day, we changed for the Charity Dinner that night at the Children's Museum. My sister-in-law came as my guest and it was a great chance to hang out, something we don't get to do often. Dinner was fabulous and we had a fun time talking to the other people at our table.

We listened to Mayor John Pike and his wife. They had great insight on reading. Afterwards, Dean Hughes spoke on the importance of books. I really enjoyed it. I talked to him about being in his class at BYU several years ago.

That night I edited until I fell asleep and woke up to the kids next door banging on the wall. It wasn't the wake up call I'd wanted, but I got to see a gorgeous sunrise on my way back from breakfast.

Saturday we had a book signing at the Children's Museum. We had a crowd that trickled in throughout the day and I sold a few books. It was so much fun. Up in the loft, they had performances by local students. The orchestra blew my mind!

I had so much fun during the week and I hope to do it again next year.