Carrie Classon
I was never a part of any team.
I was terrible at sports. I was so bad at tennis in high school that my gym teacher sent me to the school nurse to have my vision checked. I didn’t bother to tell her I was wearing contact lenses.
In elementary school, I was never asked to jump rope. Jumping rope was popular when I was in elementary school, and I was not. I watched the girls jump and knew two things: I would never be asked, and I would be terrible at jumping rope if I were asked.
Instead, I read. Books were my escape and my friends. But I never thought of writing a novel until I was almost 60.
“Would you like to come to my book club?” a woman I had never met, named Sharon, asked me in January.
“Loon Point” had not yet been released. I was a bundle of nerves. And here was this stranger who read an article about me in her local paper, asking if I would come and talk about my book.
“Of course!” I said.
The weeks passed. I hoped “Loon Point” wouldn’t disappoint my publisher. I hoped people wouldn’t write terrible things about it in their reviews. I knew that getting a first book into the world is hard. But a lot of people read “Loon Point.” I gave my husband, Peter, the job of looking at the sales numbers that my publisher seemed determined to provide (even if it might have been better for my mental health not to have quite so much information). Peter told me that my little book was doing surprisingly well.
So the night of Sharon’s book club came, and she contacted me to make sure I had not forgotten. I had not. I would not have missed Sharon’s book club for the world.
When I drove up to Sharon’s house in suburbia, I saw there were a lot of cars already parked outside, and a few more people walking down the street, headed to her house carrying book bags, and I realized all these folks had come to Sharon’s house to hear about my book.
Sharon had made name tags because, as it turned out, this was not really an established book club after all. Sharon had just moved into her new house a year ago. She had invited friends from her old home and neighbors from her new home, and Denise, a friend she’d had since third grade. Many of these women were just meeting for the first time. Sharon just wanted everyone to have a chance to meet this local author she had hunted up and ask questions.
And everyone had questions about the book. They asked about how I wrote it, and they told me about the people in their lives who reminded them of the character Wendell. We talked about the first books we remembered reading as kids and what we were reading now. Everyone seemed to enjoy “Loon Point,” whether they had read it on a Kindle or on paper or listened to the audiobook. I don’t know when I have had so much fun.
Two hours flew by and, as I left, Sharon gave me a card and some beautiful pink flowers. I didn’t read the card until I got home.
“We look forward to following your career!” the card said. It was signed, “Your Home Team.”
I’d never had a team before.
I put the flowers on my desk and thought how grateful I was to have been invited to Sharon’s book club.
Till next time,
Carrie
