I love new york

Last Thursday [7-10-14] at 2:00AM I hopped a bus to NYC to nominate Rainbow Plantation Blues to be read by an LGBT book club that meets once a month at the NYC LGBT community center. Then, on Friday [7-11-14] At 12:35AM I hopped a bus to come back home to Cleveland. Yes, I spent a total of about twelve hours in NYC and a total of about twenty-three hours on the bus! It was a crazy, insane, whirlwind trip but it  payed off because the book club voted to read my novel. There were two other books nominated but mine beat them out. When the meeting was over a member told me that about a year ago an author showed up at their meeting to nominate his book for the group to read but it was still voted down. And to this day they still haven't read it!

    They nominate their books four months in advance to give everybody time to get the books and read them. So, they will be discussing mine in November and they asked if I could come back for the discussion. Of course I said hell yeah! Well, to myself I said that but out loud I said ''yes, I would be happy to do that'' all calm, cool and collected. There were ten people there including myself and I passed out the business cards I had made prior to the trip.

    My bus arrived in NYC around 11:30AM but the meeting wasn't to start until 8:00PM, so I had over eight hours to kill. I just explored the city on foot, did a lot of people watching and drank smoothies. I 've been to NYC many times before so I know my way around Manhattan but the one thing that was new to me was the city bikes they have now. You can rent bikes and explore the city, or whatever else you need to do, by bike as well as on foot. I love the hustle and bustle, the diversity, the pulse and the concrete jungle that is NYC, and It really is ''the city that never sleeps''. It was dark by the time I walked back to the bus station from 13th st to 42nd st but there were still as many people on the streets as there had been when I arrived at 11:30 that morning! There's no place else in America like NYC.

     The bus ride back was torturous! We went through upstate New York and stopped in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo along with a few other towns I've never heard of. Then it was onto Erie, PA and finally Cleveland. It was a fourteen hour ride. I got no sleep and I had to go to my writer's support group and  then to my day job when I got back. Still, I have no regrets and I'm glad I took the risk in going. The book club had no idea I was coming and I had no idea how things would pan out. It just goes to show that you have to roll the dice in life and see what happens because you never know!