The Book Biz Is Busy On Cape Cod

by Susan Santangelo

Greetings to all from Cape Cod MA. Yep, summer is here at last, and along with the glorious weather, summer in this particular piece of paradise means craft fairs, town festivals, parades, sandcastle building, walks on the beach, and a dizzying array of opportunities for authors to meet readers and sell books. Here's a snapshot of what I'm up to. Thursday, July 7, at 7 p.m., 5 members of Sisters in Crime New England celebrated the 25th anniversary of this wonderful organization before a standing-room-only crowd at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod. A fabulous event. The next afternoon, we all packed up our books and moved over to the West Dennis Library, where we joined 10 other Cape Cod authors,including the wonderful Leslie Meier, for the first (but not the last) library Writers' Workshop. Big crowd. Lots of fun. The next two days -- that would be last Saturday and Sunday -- were spent at Brooks Park in Harwich for the annual crafts festival. Twelve authors under 3 tents. Wonderful folks -- very supportive and they bought books, too! And yesterday, two events: the annual Sandwich Festival (that would be for the town, not the food), with more than a thousand people in attendance in the morning alone. The Cape Cod Writers Center sponsored tables for member writers, and a good time was had by all. The day was capped by Dream Days on Cape Cod, a fundraiser for this worthy cause which grants wishes for terminally ill children. The fundraiser was held at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, and 8 authors were in attendance -- including Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter, Carol -- to sign books. A portion of all our sales went to support Dream Days. Needless to say, the lines of fans at their table were much longer than mine!
Next on the agenda is a two-day festival at Drummers Boy Park in Brewster (next Thursday and Friday), followed by a book signing at an independent bookstore, Market Street Books, in Mashpee. One of the cooks whose recipe is in my second Baby Boomer mystery, Sharon Thompson, will be there with me, and we're going to celebrate her birthday.
Meanwhile, I'm going to try and get some writing done on Book 3, Marriage Can Be Murder. The important word in that sentence is "try."