Reflections from the Road: Oak Mountain Middle School and the Southern Festival of Books

Last week was a double whammy. On Thursday, October 8th, I spoke at Oak Mountain Middle School.  The school has approximately 450 sixth grade students, and we broke them up in to groups of around 90 kids at a time, which meant I did five sessions in one day! Frostborn was on hand as part of the Fall 2015 Scholastic Book Fair. And Nightborn was provided through Homewood, Alabama's wonderful independent, Little Professor Book Center.


The kids were great, and very enthusiastic. I got to see the wonderful promotional display poster that Scholastic has made for their edition of Frostborn, and I was honored by the great fan art a couple of the students produced as well. Thank you Whitney Howton librarian and to Crape Myrtle's Cafe for the Grilled Fresh Fish Sandwich.

Then on Saturday, October 10th, I traveled to Nashville, Tennessee for the second time this month to attend the 27th Annual Southern Festival of Books. The festival is held in the Legislative Plaza of Downtown Nashville. I drove up that morning, lunched quickly at the excellent Crepe A Diem Food Truck, gave my presentation at noon, then did a book signing where I was delighted to meet, among others, two very enthusiastic fans that told me September was far too long to wait for book three. Afterwards, I snuck away from the festival for a bit to walk to Germantown and the Nashville Oktoberfest Street Festival,  where I heard some interesting music and had one of the best hot chocolates of my life at  Tempered Cafe and Chocolates.  Then it was back to the festival to attend a private authors reception and call it a night. Thanks to the festival organizers, and to Parnassus Books for facilitating sales of Frostborn and Nightborn.

And now, some more pictures from my visit to OMMS!

Reflections from the Road: Oak Mountain Middle School

Yesterday, I spoke to 400 kids at Oak Mountain Middle School in Birmingham, Alabama.

The kids were divided into two groups, with a fun activity session in between.

First, I spoke to 200 first in the gymnasium. Kids sat on the floor and I had a wireless microphone, which is my favorite set up because it lets me walk out into the audience and ask questions. (where I was impressed with what the OMMS students knew about historical Viking helmets.)

Next, they put me in the library, and children who purchased Frostborn were allowed to take their lunches into the library and talk with me while they ate. We did two 20-minutes "lunch with Lou" sessions. I didn't realize how short their lunch period is, so only the second session really got to play, Thrones & Bones. But we played four quick games then, and that was a blast.

Then, after I got my own lunch, I went back to the gymnasium for another presentation to 200 kids.

Highlights of the visit included talking with one particularly enthusiastic fan (Hi "H"), being asked to sign a book with the rather odd "To 'Dad'" for someone's father to daughter Christmas present, and meeting "the Asian Viking." I queried this and the boy explained, "My dad is from Norway and my mother was born in Singapore." So there you go.

A big thanks to Library Media Specialists Whitney Howton and Kim Piper, for making this such a wonderful visit.

Thanks also to Little Professor Book Center for facilitating preorder sales.