Oh my gosh! Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that my first reading for STAY would be so freaking fantastic. There were so many people. I started reading to a really good sized crowd, and when I looked up at the audience a few paragraphs later, the room was completely packed with a crowd of people standing in the back. It was also as I started to read a more emotional scene, and, well, you know me -I started to get a little choked up.

The Q&A part of the event was so much fun. Great questions! It’s so much fun to talk about the writing process with other writers and talk about dogs with other dog lovers. And signing books – oh, it doesn’t get better than having a few minutes to chat with everyone who showed up. I got to see dog pictures and sign books that would be gifts to friends, and meet kids I’d only known from Facebook photos.

I am so completely amazed and so thankful to everyone who made the event so incredibly special. Getting to be in the same room and share my work with the people who have made Rochester my home over the past ten years truly is a dream come true. Old friends, new friends, work friends, blue friends (no, no one was blue, but I seemed to be headed in that direction).

And honestly, if you haven’t been to the Greece Ridge Barnes & Noble, you are really missing something. The booksellers and staff are like a family of people who love love love books. I feel so thankful that they’ve taken me in and supported me through. Seeing STAY on the shelves is all the more special because I got to share this process with them.

Rebecca, the Community Relations Manager, even worked with my friends from high school to have the poster in the photo above sent up for the event. She unveiled it after I was done reading (thankfully, because I would have sobbed more than read if she’d done it before). It came with a card signed, from your oldest friends and friends from nursery school and summer camp and high school signed it for me. I am so touched, that not only did my friends put this together, but that Rebecca helped, and everyone at B&N kept it a secret!

I’ll steal more photos from Facebook to post later, but the above is my favorite of the set J took. The lovely Ben Gonyo posing in front of the poster my friends sent up.

THANK YOU!!! And thank you to everyone who sends and tweets photos of my book with their dogs and kids and on shelves. It is so exciting to see STAY from your perspective. And I hope I get to meet so many of you while I’m out and about this summer.

And! More links!!!!!