Best Selling Author, Susan Branch
Last month I was blessed to have met Best Selling Author, Susan Branch at a book signing here in Austin.
If you've been following me on Facebook, you saw that I was the winner of the specially autographed book, Martha's Vineyard, as well as one of her paint brushes and a piece of her water coloring blotters cut into a sweet book mark.
I have followed Susan Branch for more than thirty years because she hand letters, and hand water colors, every page of her books. Including the end pages!
Before Susan was a blogger, she had a website page that was titled, "What Others Are Saying." My comment was the first one she ever published, and it was something I wrote to her in a letter. (You remember letters, don't you? Paper and pen? Postage stamps? Mail! It was called mail!)
I love Susan for so many reasons. First, is the fact that she does all that hand lettering and hand water coloring just like Beatrix Potter did.
And then there's the fact that she and I love Beatrix Potter and want to live in a little Hill House farm. Susan actually had a little cottage that she named Hill House, and she is currently BEGGING the owner to sell it back to her.
Susan and I both sewed like maniacs, and she had her own fabric line all those years ago. Guess what??? Because technology is just so utterly fabulous these days, she's making fabric again and YOU CAN BUY IT ONLINE!!!
But I digress.
So along comes the book signing tour at the end of four years of writing and publishing her memoirs, and I finally got to meet her. Of course, having won the book and bookmark and paint brush, in true Girlfriend fashion, I had to give her a gift, too.
I made a collection of handmade cards and resisted the urge to package it in a Hallmark bag. Instead, I pulled out a sheet of tissue paper or two and stamped all over it in Girlfriend-friendly fashion, adorning it with another one of the butterflies from last summer's wedding. (Did I show you the wedding favors?)
End of the story is that through Facebook, and this book signing, I have made friends with a couple of the other Susan Branch fans in the area. We might even form our own little Society! Would you like to be a part of our group?
