That’s right – two ladies from North Carolina went on a road trip last weekend to Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. Destination – book signing at Books a Million with Sean Dietrich. My friend Ann introduced me to his writing years ago and he has become one of my favorite authors. I read his daily blog posts, listen to his podcasts and have read all of his 11 books now but there is an elusive Volume 3 that has escaped me which is not even listed on his website.

Our road trip was to take around 5 hours and started with avoiding a turkey crossing the road. We drove through snow flurries and rain. We laughed. We stopped at the Tennessee border for pictures. We ate at Cracker Barrel because that is what you do on a road trip.

It was the longest day ever. We got to the hotel early and settled in. I kept commenting that this day was so long and realized that we had changed to another time zone and that made a little bit of difference. But really – we were just excited to go to the book signing and the day dragged on. Thanks to Ann’s astute observation of the time that the book signing started we were early instead of late as I had the wrong time written down.

I won’t go through every single detail of our evening with Sean (because we are on a first name basis with him, of course) but it was wonderful. We met his wife, Jamie, who is the encourager and assistant in all things Sean related as well and I was thrilled to be able to meet the woman behind the man.

One thing I will tell you is that he is as genuine of a person as you can find. He greeted every single person there, listened to their stories (and there were many), signed as many books as they put in front of him and hugged each and every person who came to see him. He truly listened to each person.

We had taken a little gift bag with a few presents — a white squirrel dog toy for his dogs Otis Campbell and Thelma Lou, some squirrel soap for Jamie, a print of the hymn that is the title of his book and a couple little bags of his favorite Chili Cheese Fritos. He was most excited about those and had me sign the bag.

A few days later he wrote about his night in Mt. Juliet and Ann and I became famous as the two ladies from North Carolina. You can read that post by clicking here.

Come back tomorrow to read my book review of Will the Circle Be Unbroken by Sean Dietrich. Do you think I liked it?