On Tuesday I went to the North Haledon library to talk to the book club about my novel, The Darkest Winter.

This is the first time I’ve done an appearance for my work and as far as firsts go, I couldn’t ask for a better experience. Susan, the director of the library is a fantastic host and her patrons clearly love all of her hard work. There were eight women in attendance, a great turnout considering the bad weather.

So what was it like? The first thing that jumped out to me was all of the copies of The Darkest Winter on the tables in the section of the library we used. I got a rush of adrenalin when I saw them. Tangible proof that my book is out in the public and people are reading it. I got an incredible feeling of accomplishment from that.

Better yet, everyone liked my book! If that doesn’t get your ego to perk up, nothing will! I started off by giving the background of how I came up with the story, sitting cold, in the dark, in my bedroom on the third night of Hurricane Sandy. I segued to making Tim’s route across the country and my desire to show various people and communities throughout his whole journey. They loved the scenarios, action sequences, and most importantly my characters. I got a lot of compliments for how I wrote Tim’s apartment complex coming together.

That turned into discussions about humanity, how we see, regard, and treat each other. We talked quite a bit about our nation’s infrastructure, which is a major part of the book. I think the most questions came from that (along the lines of, would help take that long to happen) and that allowed me to discuss the finer details of my research that didn’t make it into the text.

The most fascinating and pleasing part of the afternoon was that just about everyone related a part–or multiple parts–of my story to their own lives. The characters I created reminded them of people from their lives and they shared stories of their own. It was so cool and it was something I didn’t expect to happen.

The event quickly turned from me doing a speaking engagement to having a discussion. I don’t think I made that happen, it organically turned into that. Now on reflection, I can think of something I want to improve.

I need to stop myself from rambling. I know this story inside and out, I’m eager to talk about it with interested people, so I can go on and on. I need to prepare more concise answers (many old questions from my writers’ group came up) I need to open it up to discussion sooner and more frequently. I did realize what I was doing at least and stopped myself a few times. Becoming aware of others (changing) body language is a good way to gauge their interest. Also, there’s a certain feeling in the air when an audience is ready to move along. I need to be more cognizant of these things in the future.

Another great experience with The Darkest Winter and I now know I have quite a few people looking forward to a sequel or two.