Receiving the gold medals from Debra Gaynor of Readers’ Favorite
Our journey south for the Miami Book Fair and Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards ceremony was a fantastic experience.
The timing was also quite fortuitous.
Final touches on the whopping new 13,000 square foot location for Nautical Ventures were still underway, so my cousin Hank McDowell and his wife Lauren had time to give us a tour of South Beach and Miami from a local’s perspective, culminating with a pleasant dinner on the veranda at the Miami Yacht Club while reminiscing about the foolish days of our youth in Savannah.
That alone was well worth the trip.
But before I forget, here’s a note to future attendees about the book fair: Miami is a coastal city, and on a peninsula. The tropical weather can and does change rapidly, from torrential rain to bright sun and back in short order.
In retrospect, carrying a poncho or umbrella would have been prudent at the Miami Book Fair.
But as we huddled under the vendor tents, the spontaneous rain shower became a great opportunity to shop for books.
During one such interval my wife and I had the leasure of meeting Stephan Earl, author of the children’s book Kayla and Eli Discover Jazz.
We found Mr. Earl gregarious and engaging. His books are colorful, educational, and entertaining, so we got an autographed copy for my youngest grandson. If you have a preteen kid or grandchild who loves to read, you should check out his website.
Miami is also headquarters for M2Hospitality.
His client list includes U2, the Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics sports teams, Jeff Gordon, Beyonce and Jay-Z, Leonardo Di Caprio, Madonna and Billy Joel, but even so my friend Mark Lavine still made time to drop by for a few soft drinks in the hotel bar so we could have our first conversation that didn’t require a phone or computer keyboard.
Validating the word “international” in the title for the event, I had the opportunity to meet a number of talented and interesting authors from all over America, as well as from countries around the world.
Some traveled from as far away as Australia, Singapore, and India for the ceremony — twenty-five and thirty hours of flight time one way, versus my three hour round trip from Atlanta. I definitely got the good end of that deal.
Debra Gaynor of Readers’ Favorite proved to be a lovely and gracious hostess.
Speakers included actor and fellow author Eriq La Salle, who talked about his exciting new thriller titled Laws of Depravity, and offered advice on creating what he called a cinematic read.
And after the awards were handed out, it was great to mingle with other writers and learn about their work.
I had the opportunity for a fascinating conversation with another “Sparky” — retired narcotics investigator Sparky McLaughlin, author of Damned from Memory, the true story of his days as a member of “the Bastard Squad.”
Just mentioning this reminds me of all the books this weekend added to my reading list!
To name a few…
There’s Tell Cotten’s Western novel Confessions of a Gunfighter, and the Christian thriller by Tony Ross, Victor.
It was also a pleasure to meet both David A. Koop, author of his bestselling memoir Cancer – It’s a Good Thing I Got It! The Life Story of a Very Lucky Man, and the author of children’s book Pickwick’s Plan, Deepak Menon, who came all the way from India.
Find out more about these and other award-winning authors at the Readers’ Favorite 2013 awards page.
[…] we were visiting Miami for the Readers’ Favorite book awards ceremony, my friend Claire Stanton Wells sent me a link to this article about Georgia Regents University and […]