By Andrea Speed

At last year’s first inaugural Gay Romance Northwest Meet-Up, Marlene Harris gave a talk on how to get your books into your local libraries. I am a huge proponent of libraries. I grew up reading books from my school libraries and community libraries, and I still visit my local one once a week. I really wanted to do this.

So I followed Marlene’s advice. I brought a copy of one of my published books into the library, and talked with the head librarian, giving her the copy, and also mentioning that it won a Rainbow Award. Because it did, and it never hurts to mention any awards you’ve won or been nominated for. She had to pass the book on to someone higher up, in charge of book acquisitions, and it took a couple of weeks before I heard anything back.

But the news was very good. Not only are there physical copies of some of my books in the system now – and e-copies! – but I was approached about doing a local author event. I am doing that May 4th, and they’ll have some of my books available for check out for people who

The advice works well, and I can’t encourage enough authors to do it. Now I realize that for right now, this only applies to authors who actually have physical copies of their work, but times are changing, and the fact that they added e-copies of my books as well feels like a step in the right direction.

Libraries are fantastic. You can find a whole lot of new readers there, and they just encourage reading in general, which we as authors should always support. Because if no one was reading our stories, why publish them at all?

So if you have a local library and haven’t visited it in ages (or ever), I encourage you to stop by. Who knows, cultivating a good relationship now could pay off in the future.

But above all else, keep writing, and keep reading. And visit GRNW too. You never know what you’ll learn.

UPCOMING EVENT – May 4 – Andrea Speed at the Parkway/Spanaway Library

2:00pm – 3:30pm – 13718 Pacific Ave. S., Tacoma 9844

Local author Andrea Speed discusses her popular paranormal fiction series, Infected. She shares what inspired her to become an author, her experiences with the writing and publishing process and her other works of fiction.

Books will be available for checkout, purchase and signing. Visit the site to read more.

Andrea Speed was born looking for trouble in some hot month without an R in it. She’s the author of the Infected series for Dreamspinner Press, the Josh of the Damned series for Riptide Publishing, and has a bunch of non-series stuff as well. She makes up stuff, just to be an ass. In her spare time, she arms lemurs in preparation for the upcoming war against the Mole Men. Viva la revolution! Visit Andrea’s website.