As a part of placing as a finalist in two categories of the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, I was invited to an awards gala in Washington D.C. That being on the other side of the continent from Seattle, I might not normally have been able to attend, but it just so happened that I was flying to the east coast anyway on the very day of the gala, so I altered my plans to fly to D.C. instead of directly to Baltimore. I'm glad I did, because I got to meet a number of other authors and publishing folks, and I even met one of the the judges who read my book. I especially enjoyed talking to author H.D. Hunter, who won for Torment, a Novella (you can see it just under mine in a picture below). I heard from Hunter how he has been taking his books to classrooms, and also that there is something called a 'virtual author visit', which I hadn't known was a thing (I would love to do one someday). Thank you, Indie Book Awards!