Jayne gets out of the house

I did a signing on Saturday with three other writers who also happen to live in the Seattle area: Stella Cameron, Cherry Adair and Yasmine Galenorn. The event was at Barnes & Noble at Southcenter. (Okay, technically speaking the address is 300 Andover Park West in Tukwila but if you live around here you know it as the Southcenter B&N, right?). The store did an absolutely fabulous job and we all had great fun chatting with readers.

By the way, after the event each of us signed a lot of books for the store. Those signed books are now available at the B&N in Southcenter so if you live in the area and couldn't make the event you can drop by the store and pick up an actual signed book by Yasmine, Stella, Cherry or myself.

But what I really wanted to blog about is how wonderful it was to get together with the other writers before the event. Stella, Cherry, Yasmine and I hung out in the cafe, drank coffee and just talked. I dunno. Maybe we don't get out enough. We're writers, after all. But it just felt so good to sit down with friends in the business and chat.

As writers we necessarily do a lot of our work in isolation. We don't have those traditional water cooler conversations. We rarely have coffee or lunch together. So at times like this when we have an excuse to get out of the house and meet with other writers we tend to get a little excited. Add caffeine to the mix and I'm sure you get the idea. Okay, we probably got a little loud. But the cafe staff was very understanding.

What did we talk about? Well, Yasmine and I showed off our latest cover art. Cherry brought her computer and demonstrated her amazing new website (www.cherryadair.com). Stella told us about her delicious new psychic romance series which will be set in New Orleans. And, of course, we did a little whining. Trust me, no one can whine like an author. It's a gift.

We didn't talk about anything we couldn't have talked about on the phone or via email, of course. That really wasn't the point. It was just really, really cool to get together. Made me realize yet again that writers need each other the same way people in other professions need to talk to folks in the same field. And sometimes you need to do that in person.

What about you? With whom do you whine?