I’m just coming down off the high of meeting a few local authors during the annual Red Line Book Festival hosted by the South Dublin Libraries. Last week was filled with readings, lectures and workshops, and while I was only able to attend three of them, the benefit far outweighed the personal cost of venturing out in the wind and rain to obscure libraries with a slight chance of losing my way in the dark and never making it home. (This is an actual fear of mine; hidden street signs and Google Maps have been known to lead me astray.)

Apart from the fear of getting lost, I’ve found there are three things that usually keep me from attending things with the words writing, book or author somewhere in the title.