Maine best-selling author Paul Doiron gave me a rather impromptu lengthy interview as we stood waiting in the Mechanic's hall library for the next authors' Roundtable discussion. I knew Paul was the scheduled luncheon speaker. He had just received the annual award for being Maine's Crime Master of the Year for his well-known series starring a Maine Game Warden.

I found Paul disarmingly charming and funny--he has a way of laughing at himself. For me, as a budding author with only three novels under my belt, it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. At one point, he asked, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" Yes, I had once attended an author talk he'd given; afterwards, I had stood in line, and then handed him a copy of my first novel, The Truth About Hannah White, which happened to be about my own Maine game warden. And I swear I'd never read one of Paul's books before I wrote it. He'd never got back to me about the copy of my book that I'd given him, and I learned why doing our impromptu interview: he happened to comment: "You never read a book that some other author gives you." Why? Because you could be sued for stealing their work. Of course. 

I was happy to hear this. I'd always wondered about his failure to comment about my book. And now I knew why. 

I was unaware that Paul's scheduled luncheon talk would consist of a public interview of Paul by another well-known author, Julia Spencer-Fleming. Later, I would find out that much of what Paul and I had informally discussed would serve as an introduction to that public interview. 

And I have to say that I was somewhat "taken aback," as they say, in my private "interview" with Paul;: it was another surprise, and it was this: 

How much I liked this guy, my fellow, albeit famous, Maine author, who acted as if he had all the time in the world to chat and share with me, another Maine author, someone he hardly knew.