When I was first invited to come speak at the Austin Film Festival about writing and having three Christmas movies and three Christmas novels come out in the last 18 months I honestly didn’t know how I’d find the time.
My latest novel Finding Christmas was coming out the week before the festival and the re-release of my Christmas Camp novel, that now includes the sequel, was released just a few weeks before. Add this to the fact that I have a new Lifetime Christmas movie coming out in December, and working on my next Christmas novel for 2020, and two movies, and it has been non-stop Christmas creating 24/7!
But when I learned the Austin Film Festival, AFF, was a “writers festival” supporting and encouraging writers I knew I had to find a way.
Honestly, I came to Austin hoping to inspire and empower some of the writes attending and I left feeling even more inspired myself by all the passion and talent I was surrounded by.
If you’re a writer, trust me, this is one festival you don’t want to miss!
One of the panels I spoke on was Writing in a Winter Wonderland where I was able to share more about writing my Christmas movies and the novels and brining my Hallmark Christmas Camp movie to life at the award-winning Phoenician resort this December.
I was in amazing company on this panel with the writer of Elf, David Berenbaum, and the writer of Netflix’s Christmas Chronicles, Matt Lieberman and there was such great energy from everyone who came to see us!
It was an added bonus that I got to spend some time in Texas seeing my books in all the local stores from Sam’s Club to Target and Walmart and Barnes and Noble and the list goes on…
To sum it all up in one word would be too hard, even for this writer, so I’ll just say I’m very thankful, humbled, inspired and empowered by this whole experience.
Now back down the Christmas rabbit hole I happily go…
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