to storytell to a great audience!

The feeling is phenomenal!

To share some of your favourite stories in a room with great ambience, to a group of about a hundred people who have voluntarily shown up on a mild Sunday, and paid what they can, to hear some good old stories!

I’m talking about the Mosaic Storytelling Festival event on Sunday.

It was in a the basement of a little church.

The organizers had made the place cozy with a nice deep carpet, some couches pulled up and chairs.

Donna Dudinsky started first.

She wanted to.

She told me I was the ‘headliner’ and she didn’t want to follow me.

It felt so strange!

I guess because for so many years I’d go to an event and assume no one ever knew anything about me, and yet this time people were actually coming to see me and Donna.

Donna had told me I had fans. That she’d gone a few weeks ago and when I was announced for March 9th people had actually cheered, saying, “Oh yeah, we love her!”

It’s very humbling!

I got up and I told two of my favourite stories: The Courage of Dajan Tigh and The Clever Wife, and then I gave them Big Red Lollipop.

Oh it was fun!

There’s something infectious about people laughing heartily at your best lines.

And even though I was intensely tired, had driven down an hour and a half from a writing retreat up north and hadn’t slept all that well for the previous two nights, I was in good form, if I say so myself.

When I looked at the time we ended the program, we’d run a whole half hour late even though I had asked the organizer if it was okay to tell Big Red Lollipop. The organizer told me that the audience hadn’t wanted it to end!

And that made me feel even better.

Afterwards people lined up to buy my books and it turned out the regional representative of Storytellers Canada had been in the audience and so were three different teacher/librarians. They’d all come especially to hear me.

The organizer said they had the best crowd yet!

So it was really really wonderful!

I’ve designed most of my presentations around my books for good reason, so it’s a real change of pace to actually flex my skills as a storyteller doing good old fashioned folktales!

*happy sigh*