You going shopping on Black Friday? Well, save your energy for Small Business Saturday; and particularly Indies First! That’s MY focus this weekend!

I was thrilled last month when I received an invitation from my friends at Paulina Springs Books to join them as a guest “author-bookseller” for a few hours this coming Saturday, November 30. I’ll be at the Sisters store beginning around 11:00am.

Paulina Springs has consistently supported local authors, including me, and has invited me to appear at their stores (to great turnouts!) in both the Redmond and Sisters stores when each of my books were published.

“Indies First” is a brand-new program that I hope will be a huge success and continue on the Saturday after Thanksgiving long into the future. It’s the brainchild of one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, and the co-owner of Queen Anne Book Company in Seattle. As Sherman so aptly describes Indies First:

“Here’s the plan: We book nerds will become booksellers. We will make recommendations. We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books.”

Of course, I’ll be happy to sign copies of Gather at the Table and Inheriting the Trade, but my goal is to sell everything on Paulina Springs’ shelves! And because I asked them to, Paulina Springs has stocked some of my favorite books that I’ve read in the past year, including:

• John Irving’s In One Person
• Richard Paul Evans’ The Last Promise
• Lawrence Hill’s Someone Knows My Name
• Robert H. Lustig’s Fat Chance
• Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed
• Janis Ian’s wonderful memoir Society’s Child
• Neale Donald Walsch’s Home With God

I encourage all my readers and friends to visit your local bookstore this weekend and buy some books. And for those in Central Oregon, I hope to see you in Sisters at Paulina Springs!