From Milwaukee with Love was the first bookish event that I’ve ever attended. I haven’t even been to an author signing before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The Well Red Damsel and MKE Books and Beer partnered with 20+ small Milwaukee businesses to create a weekend of inclusive and financially accessible events in celebration of Romance books.
I had a blast attending the events, volunteering, and meeting new people. As a way to reflect on my experience, I wrote about it.
Author Panel
To kick off the weekend, I attended an author panel about independent versus traditional publishing. Five authors discussed their path to authorship and their experience in the publishing world.
A common theme was not letting the process of publishing your work kill your joy as a writer. All of them, at different points in their careers, had ideas for books that publishers weren’t interested in, so they self-published them instead. I’d never heard of authors writing both traditional and independent books at the same time. It was cool seeing authors creating a writing career that worked for them.
After the panel, though, my head was spinning. While it’s great to get inspired and activated, fear snuck in and made me worry that I might not get an agent and have to go down the self-publishing route earlier than I wanted. Although I loved the idea of writing both traditional and independent books, that’s something I’d prefer to do later in my career when I’m more of an established author.
While I appreciated the authors’ transparency, I had to remind myself that my experience can be different. Their stories don’t have to cloud what I envision happening for my path to authorship. I can be a magical unicorn and do things my way.
Speaking of unicorns, I just read Witcha Gonna Do? by Avery Flynn, and one of the characters, Vance, is a grumpy unicorn shifter who’s always eating Lucky Charms. How fun is that?!
Meet Me on North Book Crawl
While the author panel was informative, it was just one highlight of a much larger celebration.
Over 20+ Wauwatosa businesses on North Avenue allowed over 70+ authors and vendors to use their spaces for the book crawl.
No one knew what to expect because the event was created only a few weeks ago, but over 2000 romance readers showed up. Not only did authors sell out of the books they brought along, but also the foot traffic in the area was off the charts.
It was a wildly fun and busy day!
Volunteering
One of the most creative parts of the event was the book crawl passport, which gave me a front-row seat to all the fun as a volunteer.
Attendees got a passport that included all participating locations. If they collected a stamp from each stop on the book crawl, they could enter to win a $500 gift card to the Well Red Damsel.
My job was to stamp the passports of whoever stopped by Delicious Bites, which is a catering company in Wauwatosa that hosted the two vendors—Crafted LLC and Gilded & Grace.
I enjoyed greeting and welcoming everyone who stopped at our location. I probably said hi to a thousand people. Even though it was a long day and people eventually grew tired from all the standing and walking involved, everyone was so happy, and the energy was so good.
Meeting Authors
Of course, no bookish weekend would be complete without meeting the authors themselves—and I wasn’t about to miss my chance.
People mentioned they waited for an hour or two to meet the authors at the library, which was the primary spot
I wanted to visit. So, during my lunch break, I grabbed the yummy meal Simple Eats MKE provided to volunteers and walked to the library. I figured that I could eat in line.
Luckily, the lines were very short, which meant I didn’t get to check my teeth for food before I met the authors. Oops. It also meant I didn’t have much time to think before it was my turn, so I was glad to have prepped questions the night before.
I asked Avery Flynn and Abigail Owens how they planned out their book series. I learned that each book in a series is not guaranteed to be published.
For example, Avery Flynn sold the first two books in The Sherwood Witches series, and separately sold the third book in the series. Sales from those three books will dictate whether she gets a deal for the fourth and fifth books. She said if I liked the series, I should tell everyone and their friends so she could keep writing them. That’s why I’m mentioning it here!
I also chatted with Markelle Grabo, who was a debut author in 2024. She’s working on her second novel, which comes out in 2026. She said it was nice to have a year in between publishing her next book, so she has time to prepare for marketing it. It’s common for authors to have a book out each year, which can make balancing the business side with the writing side of being an author difficult. Since her debut came out, she’s learned so much about marketing that she’s even more excited for her second book because she knows what to expect.
Book Talk
The Let’s Get Cozy Book Club podcast is reading The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. You can read along with us and listen to the podcast to hear our thoughts on it.
Initially, I didn’t know any of the authors who were attending the event, which meant I needed to order some books and do some reading. I’m glad to have expanded my reading repertoire and read some books I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise.
The Games Gods Play by Abigail Owens immediately reminded me of the TV show Chaos on Netflix. I was devastated when the show wasn’t renewed because it began my love of the underworld. When I discovered that Lyra, the protagonist in The Games Gods Play, falls in love with Hades, I was hooked. It’s like The Hunger Games meets Chaos meets Fourth Wing. I’m obsessed.
Conclusion
Dipping my toes into a bookish event was way more fun than I anticipated. I loved hearing from authors who were doing things differently. It really opened my mind that I can create a path for myself and do things how I want to. I couldn’t help but think of how much fun it would be to do an event like this as an author. A girl can dream that maybe one year I’ll be at one of the authors at those tables!
Until next year, when I hope From Milwaukee with Love happens again, I plan to attend more bookish events in the meantime.
Sending you lots of magical unicorns,
Liza