Come see me and lots of other authors at the first Greater Altoona Area Book Festival at the Altoona Public Library (a big modern building) on May 12. My books are already in the library there.

I have two book fairs lined up for this year, so far. The first is very local — Altoona is the nearest small city in my area, famous for its railroad history and the Horseshoe Curve constructed in 1854. The second is regional — The Allegheny Regional Festival of Books in its first year, in Bedford, PA, September 14-15.

Book fairs are something like camping trips — you lay out all your gear on the bed and make lists and try to make sure nothing is missing, with the added complication of checking that your credit card app (Square) still works with your current cellphone. Then there's the new cheap black tablecloth — is this one truly rectangular unlike the last one which surprised you at the last event you by being oval?

I've replaced my bad HollowLands business cards with better ones, so that I now have cards for Perkunas Press (publisher), HollowLands (writing colleagues), and Karen Myers Author (readers). I find it handy to cover all bases at book fairs like this, not just readers.

And, finally, I have to update the big display poster (3′ by 1.7′) that hangs from a stand and hopefully intrigues prospective readers from across the room. The posters themselves are very inexpensive, but this is my first with the new branding for Karen Myers Author and it had all sorts of imponderable issues. I really wanted to show off the new book covers for the Affinities of Magic series, though those books are not yet released. And the new covers have made me dissatisfied with the old covers for the Chained Adept series — my new cover artist has agreed to make four new covers for me, but in the meantime they don't look well compared to the new series.

By the time the second book fair this year rolls around, I may have new covers for the Chained Adept series, and there will be more entries in the Affinities of Magic series, so I'll be making a new version of this poster again.