A while back I was brought into a facebook group for local authors, Spilled Ink (Virginia), unfortunately, I was not very active in the group. I did not participate in the conversations on the channel nor did I go to any of the events. That is until I went to Jirani Coffeehouse last Friday for my very first Spilled Ink event. It took me a little while to find a parking space in Manassas and then a bit more time to locate the coffeehouse, and when I did, I discovered that I missed the very beginning of the event. But based upon the images the group posted of the event all I missed was the opening and a bit of the first reading.
I got quickly got a bottle of water and sat down and began to listen. Unfortunately, my memory is not what it once was and the concepts of the readings have for the most part fled from my mind with a few exceptions. While I was there, I heard some poetry, a commentary and an excerpt from a couple of novels. The poetry escapes my memory, but the commentary and the passages I heard did lodge in my mind. The commentary was about the state of families in the world from the point of view of a cleaning woman, who was shocked that there was any marital issue with a particular family. The reason it was moving was this family seemed to be the perfect family and would never have these kinds of problems. But it ended with hopes that things would get better for everyone.
The two excerpts though caught my eye, one of them was from a serialized detective story currently titled Axe to Grind while the other is Of Captivity & Kings. Both caught my eye and when the break came in the night I was able to speak with both of the writers. E.Y. Laster had some copies of her book, and she gave it to me, and as soon as I finish my current book, I will start reading the book and give it an honest and fair review.
The other author, Theo March, gave me some insights into his journey with Axe to Grind, the first being that this original title will be changed once he has completed the story. He also mentioned that once he is finished with the story, he will collect all of the loose chapters so they can be removed from his site and published on Amazon, under a new title. Again as soon as I make some headspace for the book, I plan on reading it on his site, so if you are interested read it while you can.
The fact that I was able to interact with both of these writers is the exact reason this group meets up like this. It gives authors the chance to introduce people to their work in a way that isn’t possible with just posting them online. It is a very visceral connection that has started to dissipate from the world at least in the minds of some people. And after having experienced my first journey into the readings of local authors, I can not wait to go again and even to share an excerpt from my own book. I only regret not having gotten there sooner.