Quarantine Adventures: Friends and Fiction Weekly Chat

Back in April, I discovered the Friends and Fiction Facebook page that is moderated by five wonderful authors: Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Harvey, Patti Harvey, and Mary Alice Monroe. I've been a fan of Mary Kay Andrews and Mary Alice Monroe for years. The others are new authors to me.

Once a week, the five of them do a Facebook Live event with their readers letting them know what is going on their lives, how they are surviving the pandemic, and to talk about their books. All of them have books coming out sometime this year. I think they do it to keep their sanity of not being on book tour.

I joined them for their first live event. It was right around the supper hour which made it difficult to get dinner on the table (or cleaned up) while watching these ladies interact with each other. They are an amazing group of ladies and the banter between them all makes joining worthwhile.

After several weeks, they decided to have guest authors come and join their show. What going me back on the Friends and Fiction Facebook live bandwagon was them having Debbie Macomber on. Debbie is one of my favorite authors and it is how I discovered Brenda Novak. Debbie talked about her new book, A Walk Along the Beach, which I can't wait to read. The five regulars take turns asking the guest author questions and then if there is time they pull questions from the comments. It is so much fun seeing the authors and guest author interact with each other.

This past week, the guest author was Delia Owens, who wrote Where the Crawdads Sing, which we read in book club last year. It was a wonderful book. Not only has Delia wrote Where the Crawdads Sing but several non-fiction books on wildlife including several books set in Africa. Not only did Delia talk about Where the Crawdads Sing but the non-fiction books as well. They also talked about how descriptive writing is dead and how the setting is really a character as well. The banter was alive and well this week too. Mary Kay killed her first person this week. Kristin didn't expose herself to anyone. The best part was them signing off. I think they forgot to the end the Facebook live feed and they were chatting amongst themselves and it was delightful to watch them interact "off-camera."

They have a guest author about every other week through the end of summer. One week, they are having the Twisted Sisters on. After that we will see if this continues. Even with just the five of them, it is very entertaining. As my schedule allows, I will continue to tune in especially now that the hubby has games again.