Author Appreciation Week - Day 1

Author Appreciation Week is the brain child of debut author Heidi Kling.

If you would like to participate simply, write a blog post each day of next week about the authors you appreciate and why! The best part, there are no rules. Be as creative as you want. Looking for more information? Check out Heidi’s blog.

My goal for Author Appreciation Week is to highlight authors whose books I love reading and who have impacted how I choose which I’ll read next. Some days, there will be multiple authors spotlighted, other days only one.  There is no particular order.  These are authors who write excellent books.

First up is Saundra Mitchell.

Her book Shadowed Summer is the perfect mix of ghost story and mystery. It has all the classic elements you would expect and a few you don’t: a cemetery, a ghost, a secret and a boy with a Ouija Board. The setting of Ondine, Louisiana is so real that you can feel the mugginess of the summer coming off the page. Within a few pages, it is very clear that Saundra did lots of research to make sure that all of the details were correct.

In an interview Saundra stated that as a child she spent a lot of time at the library hanging out in the 312s and 133s reading books about clairvoyance, past lives and reincarnation, and learning about the beyond. That is just awesome! All of that reading and knowledge comes through in Shadowed Summer. As a librarian, I love hearing authors talk about their love of libraries.

Another reason I admire and appreciate Saundra is that she is very accessible. I tend to have this vision of authors where they are all sitting in some fabulous café in Paris or some exotic location chatting and working on their next book, not willing to talk to readers or librarians. (I may have read too many books by Hemingway and other “Lost Generation” authors in high school and college, which could be why I have this belief). To the contrary, Saundra takes the time to interact with her readers simply by being accessible. She is on Twitter and Facebook and has a blog where she interviews fellow authors. (It is lots of fun you should check it out!)

I’m very excited to read Saundra’s next book, The Vespertine, which has a tentative release date of Spring 2011. For information on The Vespertine head on over to http://thevespertine.com/.