Boonsboro

Crawford's Restaurant, Guns & Ammo. Bwahahaha.

I've been meaning to write about my weekend in Boonsboro, Maryland for ages. On November 6th I was invited to Turn the Page bookstore for a group signing thanks to my cousin Suzanne, who is the innkeeper at Nora Roberts's gorgeous Inn Boonsboro. My mom and I spent Friday night in the penthouse suite, watching "Bell, Book & Candle" on the king-size four-poster bed.

The bathtub, oh my goodness. And the toilet is heated, goes up and down by itself, and even rinses your bits for you. Not that I pressed that button. Oh no.People stood in line for hours (no, I'm not exaggerating) to get their Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb novels signed, and sometimes they picked up my book while they were waiting. I lost track of how many copies I signed, and that almost never happens. Hooray!

More importantly, I got to meet a group of wonderfully witty, fun, and all-around nice writers. Here I am with Jeanine Cummins, Lisa Scottoline, and Lisa's daughter and co-author Francesca Serritella. I also got to meet Mariah Stewart and Carolyn Turgeon, author of Godmother and the forthcoming Mermaid; I'm particularly excited about those because Carolyn writes my kind of stuff. Jeanine too, actually--she has strong Irish connections, so of course we had a lot to talk about. Here's one of my favorite passages from her novel, The Outside Boy:

Her voice was thin, watery. She opened and closed her toothless mouth. Her eyes was shining in the faint light. Granny could do that, she could change, like. Granny of the Transformations. Right now in the grief-stricken wagon she was a mournful fish. Mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, in silence. I imagined that one more gape of the mouth and she would sprout fins and gills, and she would rend off her black funeral dress and reveal a breastplate of hard, beautiful scales beneath, like the blue and green glass scattered on the ground outside. And then she would swim away in a river of her own tears.

I really, really love that image.My dad and grandparents came down too, and Kate drove out from Baltimore, so after the signing we had a big family dinner at a pizzeria down the street. None of us had seen Suzanne in a long, long time, so it was pretty special. (I wanted to post a group picture, but none of them came out very well. Too much flash.)

Anyway, thanks to Janeen at Turn the Page for putting together such a wonderful event, and Nora for inviting me, and Suzanne for making it happen in the first place!

Assateague Island

At last, some new travel to report! This past weekend I went camping with my sister and several new friends on Assateague Island in Maryland, which is known (to everyone but me, apparently) for its population of wild ponies. It was overcast the whole time, but we still had fun getting our feet wet on the beach, walking through the marsh, and looking out for deer and horses.

(That's Kate and Elliot having a seaweed fight. Some things will never change.)