Not long ago I awoke in the middle of the night and realized immediately that it had arrived. The air, when I had gone to bed, was still faintly sultry, the air of evening that comes after a day of golden, soft sunshine. But when I woke in the dark I felt how the temperature had dropped, and the air smelled of autumn. It was like learning a secret, the rest of the city asleep around me, while I felt that I was the first to learn: autumn had come swiftly, quietly, to town. The moment was brief and delicious, and resonant with sudden memories and sensations that pulled me back into the comfort of sleep, and when I woke it was still there, the edge of the chill, but even more – the faint smell of this change in the seasons.

It made me want to read.

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Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming - and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.

"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.

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I have a friend who's a very famous author, and the other day I asked her, "What's the first thing you wrote that you were proud of?" And she said it was her first novel. Which is a beautiful novel, but it was written when she was in her thirties. And I thought, What? Because the first thing I remember being proud of (and I'm talking proud, proud) was a poem I wrote when I was nine. It ended with the soul-stirring line, "The beauty enchantment now was broke." I actually submitted this poem to a magazine (where it was promptly rejected, needless to say).

Never mind. I got proud again, very soon afterwards, of something I wrote in the third grade. It was a page-long essay about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, accompanied for no extra charge by a construction paper silhouette. The essay moved me to tears every time I read it. The last line here was: "He had always wanted to free the slaves, and now he had." So. There you are. Don't you have tears in your eyes?

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Almost every published author will tell you that they got fistfuls of rejection letters before their first book deal; many other would be authors have never received anything but. First time author Maya Frost explains how stepping off the treadmill of convention not only led her and her family into an amazing new debt-free, international lifestyle (despite putting four children through college in almost as many years) but also led to the publication of her first book (a book, I should add, that I've read cover to cover and back again, and already recommended to at least a dozen friends!) - Davina, BookBrowse editor.

I've spent the last decade teaching people how to pay attention, and it never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to trust our own intuition about what matters most.  Whether we're worried about our child's education or our next career move, we tend to stick with conventional wisdom rather than listen to our hearts.

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For many authors, writing a novel and getting published is the easy part; the challenge comes in building awareness among readers in a world over-crowded with new books. Savvy authors know that the publicity department of their publisher can only do so much, and such authors look for ways to reach out directly to their readers. One novelist, John Shors, has spoken to about 2,000 book clubs in the past three years!

Dear Reader,

In 2004, the hardcover version of my debut novel, Beneath a Marble Sky, was released. I was blessed because, over the next year, Beneath a Marble Sky did quite well--garnering wonderful reviews, winning a national award, and attracting significant interest from Hollywood. Due to all of these events, I was able to quit my day job and become a fulltime novelist.

I was grateful to readers for their support, and decided that I wanted to do something to support readers in return. So, when Penguin released the paperback version of Beneath a Marble Sky in 2006, I decided to add a letter to the back of the book that invited book clubs to invite me to their evenings (all they needed was a speakerphone). I included my email address.

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An endless supply of quotes exist telling us we should do what we love in life. Though many are cliché, I found myself rooting around for just the right one after hearing Alexander McCall Smith read from his latest book, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. Having read most of the books in his No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, I was eager to see and hear in person the man who brought me the much adored Precious Ramotswe. As I entered the Borders bookstore in Ann Arbor, it was evident that I was not alone.

Since I probably haven't had the pleasure of listening to someone read to me since kindergarten carpet time, it was with happy nostalgia that I sat cross-legged and elbow to elbow on the bookstore floor, listening to the cadenced voice of Mr. McCall Smith. Bewitched by his lilt and laughter, he quickly transformed the packed room of overwrought adults into a sea of sunny, eager faces as he read his favorite passages from Tea Time.

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