Book Festival: Jane Yolen at Blackwell's

I have so much to cover about the Edinburgh International Book Festival, but I'll try to keep my posts to only a few per day. Gads! (If you're subscribed to my posts, I hope you know you can subscribe to my newsletter and get them all at one time rather than me stuffing your in-boxes!)
     Anyhoo, Jane Yolen came down from St Andrews to stay with us for two days (in what we have dubbed "Jane's Room"), because she had an evening panel event at Blackwell's Bookshop hosted by Russell Jones of Shoreline of Infinity - the best (only) Sci-Fi magazine in Edinburgh! (That's Russell's joke!) The invited authors were Jane, Jo Walton, Ada Palmer, and Rachel Plummer. Gin is the big drink during Fringe this year, and each of them had a drink named after them, free with the evening's ticket. It was a packed out as each of them read from their works.Jane was the last speaker, of course, the Grand Dame!The event was wonderful and got especially interesting when an audience member asked about how music and rhythm affected each of the writers. Turns out, very much so!
     Of course, my favorite part of the event was having Jane stay with us. Jane and I have developed a new morning ritual of sitting on the couch with cream tea and writing stories. We're actually quite dangerous together as we tend to end up with about fifteen new stories for me to illustrate every time she stays. Either I've drawn something that makes her think of a story, or she's written something that makes me want to draw. Needless to say, I'm drawing as fast as I can!