SFINE only FIVE days away! A love letter to San Francisco….

What is SFINE, you say? Well, I’ll be a total fan girl in five days when I get to sign books at The Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco! Get all the deets here: http://www.sfine.net/

I’ve been so blessed to visit schools and do book signings for the past two years with some incredible authors like Michelle Leighton, Fisher Amelie, Courtney Cole, Tiffany King, Nichole Chase, & Carol & Adam Kunz…just to name a few! But this time, I’m staying closer to home, which is a big thrill for me. Last year I stayed close to home too and was blessed to meet the amazing Killian McRea at the San Rosa Book Festival last September. The amazing Ms. M is the brains behind SFINE and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. So this Saturday will find me in fan girl mode as I sign books, chat with readers, eat lots of clam chowder at pier 39, buy an outrageous amount of cheese and bread and olive oil at the Ferry Building, and well…maybe I’ll have time to sip a little bit of wine. Be sure to swing by my booth if you’re attending and let me know you read my love letter, I’ll have something special for you 😀

It seems everyone has a tale about falling in love with or in San Francisco. As I’m packing up my books and swag to go to SFINE, I thought I’d share mine with you.

My love letter to San Francisco:

I flew to California for the first time and landed at SFO nearly thirty years ago. My boyfriend, my husband now, picked me up at the airport and couldn’t wait to show me the city. We would eventually wind our way down the coast to make our way to meet his parents in his small hometown in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the settings of Winnemucca, a small-town fairy tale. Not before doing San Francisco, Napa, Bodega Bay & San Simeon first 🙂 The city was something of a dream for me. I’d heard about San Francisco all my life growing up in Chicago. And of course I’d seen its unique vistas in movies. My family were big travelers, but the furthest west we’d gotten was Colorado on Boy Scout camping trips–I was the little sister of two eagle scouts, so I went on a lot of camping trips 🙂 My brother would attend Berkeley on a full fellowship, but it was too expensive for me to travel to see him while he got his masters. The mythology continued in the stories he’d tell about living in a turret and about Muir Woods. Mom and Dad were equally enchanted. It was after Christmas that I left the gray, snowy world of The Windy City and landed in paradise. Everything was so incredibly green in San Francisco and the bay was the kind of gorgeous it can only be when you see it for the first time in full sun when sailboats hug Alcatraz and tack toward the Golden Gate into the great beyond. Joe would buy me the most romantic present I’d ever received until then. The most expensive gift I’d ever received until then. It was a jewelry box and I felt so incredibly cherished when he bought it for me. The extravagance took my breath away as did our whirlwind romance with each other in the city. I will always love San Francisco. It was where my husband and I became sweethearts.