Meeting Suzanne Brockmann

What I'm reading: Spirit Lake by Christine DeSmet

What I'm writing: P&P Manual for my RWA chapter's contest. Randy and Sarah are waiting.

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I drove to Brandon, near Tampa, Florida. As soon as I'd discovered Suzanne Brockmann was signing and doing a Q&A that evening, I recruited my husband to come along because I don't drive well at night. He agreed, and even ended up having to turn down a behind the scenes tour at NASA that included (although he didn't know it at the time, or I think he'd have backed out) donning clean suits and getting inside the shuttle cockpit. But he's a man of his word (and MAYBE he also would worry about me driving 75 miles late at night) and came along.

We grabbed some dinner and then headed to the bookstore where Suzanne was setting up for the signing. She's ever so friendly and gracious, and signed the copy of her book I'd brought along.

What really impressed and amazed me was that she remembered my name. I'd spoken with her a couple of times at RWA Nationals, but there were thousands of others there. And, at the conference, I always had a name tag on. We had exchanged a few emails, but I never expected her to match the face with the name. Heck, I used to work at conventions and would run into faces that looked familiar, but without their name tags and out of uniform, I'm hard-pressed to remember the names. That Suz greeted me personally more than made up for the fact that I didn't win anything in her raffle. Priceless.

Her Q&A was enlightening. Her writing method is the opposite of mine. She can plot multiple books in advance. I can't plot more than a few scenes in advance. Should it ever happen that I have a fan base, I hope I'll be half as charming. Make that one-fourth.

Thanks for a fun evening, Suz, and my husband enjoyed himself, too. For the record, he schlepped his briefcase full of work and intended to sit off in a corner while I did my thing, but he not only sat in on the Q&A but asked a few questions of his own.