Had a great time at the Baltimore Book Festival yesterday. The layout of Mt. Vernon Place is just right to let people browse and have fun without feeling too cramped or tired out from a lot of walking. The setting is pretty–with the monument in the middle and fountains and statuary adorning the cobblestone streets. Live music boomed into the air. And the food wasn’t just your standard carnival fare; some great ethnic cuisine was thrown into the mix.

But the important part, of course, was the books. There were a lot of them. And even though I went telling myself that I wasn’t going to buy any more books, that I had more books than I could read in a year already–I still went home with a few that tickled my paranormal bone. Right now I’m developing a new series about Maryland witches and so I was particularly interested in all the books I could find about Green Witches and Witch Catchers.

There were two new authors that gave a talk on getting the book written and published, and both of them claimed to have done “end runs” around their agents. I was a little perplexed by this. I think I have a very healthy relationship with my agent, the lovely Jennifer Schober. I could perhaps imagine entering something in a contest without telling her because it slipped my mind, but the idea of actually submitting my work to a publisher behind her back seems kind of cagey to me.

I’m sure that if Jennifer thought my work shouldn’t be submitted somewhere, I would listen carefully to her advice and probably heed it. I’m just as certain that if I was insistent that she submit my work somewhere, she would do so. So I left that panel feeling rather puzzled!

Tags: agents, baltimore, ghost wife, Jennifer Schober, maryland, panels, witchcraft, witches

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 6:43 am and is filed under Events & Signings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.