Today’s Guest Post is written by a dear friend of mine, Lauralee!  She doesn’t have her own blog (I know, crazy huh!?!)  But I think maybe after writing this guest post for me, I can talk her into getting her own.  We’ve known each other for *#&*  years and I know that Lauralee has a lot of great things to say.  Which is why when I found out she was going to (and helped put on) this Author’s Lunch for AAUW, I HAD to talk her into writing a guest blog post for me.  This fits in perfectly with the theme of this blog.  I hope you’ll enjoy learning about the AAUW and getting to know Lauralee a little bit.  Please make her feel welcome!

Hi, This is my first blog post but I wanted to share an event I recently attended.  The event in question was the AAUW Authors Lunch.  The AAUW is The American Association of University Women, advancing equity, lifelong education and positive societal change for women and girls…

The Authors Lunch is an annual fund raiser held by the Manhattan Beach, Ca chapter.  The funds from this event will help send girls between 7th and 8th grade to a math and science camp for a week.  This is the age most girls start to lose interest in math and science and these camp experiences can help keep them interested and motivated.

This year’s theme was “A touch of Humor”.  We had 4 wonderful women speak to us about writing and their most recent books.  The authors are not always all women, but this time they were, and all quite funny. All 4 women blog.

The MC was Emmy winning, Maria Hall-Brown.  She was charming and gracious and kept the program on track.  Maria is the producer and host of KOCE TV’s program “Bookmark with Maria Hall Brown“.

The first author Maria introduced was Amy Wilentz, who wrote “I feel Earthquakes More often than they happen”.  She is originally from New Jersey and talked of moving across country to Los Angeles.  She wrote about the Hollywood elite and was ostracized because of some of the things she wrote and the friends who had invited her were put on probation and not allowed to bring guests anymore.   As you are probably aware Arnold Schwarzenegger is our governor, and probably one of the few governor’s to have “action figures” made of them.  She brought a talking Arnold doll with her as a prop.  She found him while she was working on the book and Arnold and his election plays a part in the book, she of course had to have the doll.

The next Author was Harley Jane Kozak, who wrote “Dead Ex” which was a murder mystery and suspense novel.  Harley was an actor and has appeared in Guiding Light and Santa Barbara.   She blogs on The Lipstick Chronicles with 4 other writers.  When she changed her stage name to Harley she was in her apartment and there happened to be a Harley parked in her apartment, and one evening looked over and thought, WOW, that’s a cool name.  Her first book was “Dating Dead Men” which won the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards.  Her publicist then pushed her to bring back the protagonist of the book, a young woman named Wallie.   She had taken 11 years to write the first novel, her publicist asked for the second one in less than a year,  she had a toddler and a baby,  she was given 15 months in consideration of that.  She has written 3 more books since then.

Amy Wallen was the third Author introduced.  She wrote “Moon Pies and Movie Stars”.  A fictional account of a woman that is raising her grandchildren when she sees her missing daughter in a commercial, and she decides to go to Hollywood to confront her.   Amy proclaims she was raised by a pack of wild Texans without ever actually having lived there.   She shared with us the secret that her characters were often composites of people she knows, secret most authors vigorously deny.  Her mom has written to her every week since she left home for college, and she shared one of the letters her mom had recently written.  It was about the local goings on, including misunderstandings and disagreements between lifelong friends and complications that can only happen in a small close community.  It was amusing and touching, and interestingly it was written like the type of conversation you would only have sitting around the kitchen table over coffee with an old friend or relative.  It reminded me of listening to my mom and her mom talk in grandma’s kitchen. Catching up on the local goings on.  I have not read the book yet but I do plan to.   Amy is the founder and host of DimeStories events and radio series, 3 minute stories read by the authors which can be heard on National Public Radio, and is available on iTunes.

Our Final Author was Elizabeth Beckwith.  She wrote “Raising the Perfect Child through Guilt and Manipulation”.  It is her first book and was inspired when she was pregnant for her first child.  She felt pressured to find a parenting philosophy, and since she did not have one and was not sure she could pick one up at Baby’s R Us she started thinking of how her parents raised her.  Her resulting book is a tongue in cheek look at raising the perfect child using guilt and manipulation by pointing out the error of the ways of others.  She is a stand-up comedian and has appeared on “The Late, Late Show” 3 times.   She shared some sections from her book that was very amusing, including a guide to who is typically on the “A#$ H@$%” List that you take advantage to point out at every occasion, without being rude.

We had a lovely afternoon with these women and laughed a lot.  It was nice to get to hear these women speak and to spend an afternoon learning about them and their experiences.  It was interesting that each of them had deadline issues as I type this last sentence the morning I promised to have this done.  Thanks C for your patience, And TG for spell check!!