SIBA: Day One!

I was not quite sure what to expect at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance's Trade Show; I just knew I had to be there this year!  Friday was an eventful day beginning with back-to-back break-out sessions in the morning - one regarding successful indie bookstore & book blogger relationships. Rebecca Joines Schinsky of The Booklady's Blog and Kelly Justice from Fountain Bookstore shared their respective 'get in bed with a book blogger' campaign while book blogger Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com shared his insights.  I was impressed with the amount of book sellers in the room seeking information about what it is we do, how we do it, and why we blog....


I have already inhaled one of the books from my next session 'True Southern: Books Steeped in the South'....I love Southern literature - there's something just so comforting with a touch of heat and mystery.....and dependent on the area of the South either kudzu or spanish moss is threatening to take over!  Debut author, Rhodi Hawk moderated this panel of wonderful authors. She also wrote a fantastic gothic first novel set in New Orleans, A Twisted Ladder. I'll be posting my review later in the week, along with hosting a giveaway of her signed paperback!

Ellen Brown, author of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, a biography of THE book and Ms. Brown is a fascinating author in her own right! We learned the 75th anniversary of Gone With the Wind is in 2011. (first published in 1936, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and the movie was released in 1939)


Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August; a novel set in the South during the 1950s when a pretty young white girl from the white-gloved society was not supposed to fall for the son of the help.


Richard Jay Hutto, author of A Peculiar Tribe of People; true crime set in Macon, Georgia in 1950s ~ wife brutally murdered while husband in the hospital who is several weeks later arrested himself for the murder. So many twists and turns, this one is going to be crazier than any crime imagined!

Jay Jennings

Jay Jennings, SIBA Okra Pick author of Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an American City; Coach of an Arkansas small town has to pull together a team divided by race so he can save a city in the 1960s.


I also learned that I should not be as hesitant of using Twitter as I am, and oh man, you should have seen the giant screens throughout the conference area with the Twitter feed from the Trade Show going almost faster than I could read at times! 


The best part about the trade show however was meeting other bloggers throughout Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Below are pictures of me with Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog, Heather at Raging Bibliomania and Natalie at Coffee and a Book Chick.

Kathy, Stacy and Heather

Kathy, Stacy, Heather and Natalie

More pictures and author gushing tomorrow!