This weekend, I’ll be a speaker at the Louisiana Book Festival, my last big book event of the year. I think they’re stretching the definition of “Louisiana author” a little bit, but they invited me. I don’t even know if they know of my Louisiana connections (my family is from Louisiana, and I lived there briefly when I was a baby). It’s ironic that this is my first big state book festival invitation. So far, Texas hasn’t been interested in me for the state book festival, state teen book festival, or even regional teen book festival. Texas needs to up its game! I also haven’t heard anything from Oklahoma (my actual native state).

I’m on one of the panels for teens, but I’m not sure what kind of audience we’ll have for the first panel in the morning. The up side of that is that I have the rest of the day free to go to the panels I find interesting. And there’s the south Louisiana food. I’m hoping to get a little gumbo and maybe a beignet while I’m there.

It’s just a one-night trip, but I’m doing my usual overpreparation, as though I’ll be gone for a week. My wardrobe planning keeps changing as the weather forecast keeps changing. I was going to buy a new dress for cooler weather, but now it’s going to be chilly enough (and I’ll have to be outdoors enough) that I think I’ll just go with slacks and a sweater, and I have plenty of sweaters I seldom get to wear. There’s a party the night before, and it will probably be too chilly to wear my little black dress unless I also wear a coat, so I think I’ll do a skirt and sweater for that. That means I won’t have to go shopping. I really need to purge my wardrobe before I add more to it.

So, if you’re in Louisiana and coming to the book festival, I hope to see you!