Once I remember saying to a teacher friend, "You must really like children."

"I like SOME children," she corrected me.

I nearly started this post by saying, "I love book clubs," but the truth is I find all book clubs interesting. I've visited a number now, and there is no way to generalize... comparing one to another is like comparing Belgium to Mexico.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to the Wonderland Book Club, a literary group sponsored by the North Carolina Writers' Network* and facilitated by the poet and writing guru, Alice Osborn. The topic was my novel, Sleeping with Patty Hearst, but we talked about all kinds of things:
- the way our culture loves celebrity artists but doesn't support creative pursuits (or even reading!);
- the difficulty of ending a story;
- notorious key parties/spouse swapping of the 1970s; and
- writers' colonies (one of the members has been to MacDowell** three times, including once when Tillie Olsen was there - I found that fascinating);

*Note to writers: NCNW is a great resource no matter where you live.
**http://www.macdowellcolony.org/

The Wonderland group meets for two hours, and I went in worried about how to fill any awkward silences. I shouldn't have worried; this was a thoughtful, articulate group with lots of hard questions (the best kind). The time flew by, and several of us were still talking a half hour after the meeting was officially over.

This would have been fun under any circumstances, but to top it off, I had a surprise visitor. About halfway through the meeting, author Andy Holloman (SHADES OF GRAY) and his son walked in with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. Lately most of my surprises haven't been that great, so this was a nice change. I'm a sucker for flowers, especially surprise flowers.

There's a picture on the Sleeping with Patty Hearst Facebook page ...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sleepi...

Looking forward to more book clubs in the coming weeks. I haven't tried one by Skype yet, but I'm game if anyone's interested.