It was the summer of 2019 when I attended my first book themed convention/conference. Sure, I had been to other conventions before for a variety of things, mostly pop culture. But this was the first time it was exclusively about authors and readers. I was a little bit concerned because the authors that were going to be there I had never heard of before. And as I started to research them, they were primarily romance writers. I had no idea that there were so many different sub-genres of romance. The problem was, I'm not into romance novels. So now I'm doubly nervous because I'm a guy going to a convention that is going to be primarily populated with authors and fans of romance novels.
In the time leading up to the convention, I joined the attendee Facebook group so that I could get to know the people at least a little bit before I was going to be face to face with them. Over those lead up months it was really quite fun interacting with the other attendees and the authors. There does seem to be a strong affection for coffee, alcohol and cats. But I was also able to get some input from the others about what all was going to be going on at the convention. And I was able to get some input from others as to whether or not any of the authors were working in the genres that I enjoyed reading. Oh, by the way my preferred genres are Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Mystery. While I still knew that about 90-95% of the authors did not write in my preferred genres, they still accepted me for me.
Some of the activities that they had planned were quite interesting. I did my first painting (as an adult) while sipping on mimosas in the morning. I learned about the best ways to deal with alien abduction. I learned a popular card game played by crew members of space faring vessels. But one of the most enlightening activities was "Speed Meeting" where authors and readers got to get to know each other in a round table setting in just a few minutes before we readers moved on to the next table of authors. And it during this activity that my identity as "Son of a Librarian" was born. It is true that my mom was a librarian and media specialist in the school system for many years. And having grown up in the age before the internet, reading was a big part of my youth. During the time that I got to know these authors, and other readers, it really came to light that the lesser known and independent authors have a really hard time getting the word out about their books because they may not have a big publisher behind them.
So that is why I decided to start up my podcast. To have the ability to talk about the books that I read. To hopefully help others find out about these authors. Now I won't be dedicating myself just to independent authors. I will also be reviewing books by some more well known and established authors as well. I may also get into some other topics, literary related of course. And some day I may also do some interviews with authors. We will have to see how that works out.
So that's the story of how this got started. If you see a review on Amazon, GoodReads or anywhere else from Son of a Librarian, there is a very good chance that it was me.