Renegade Rip

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Campus

Media Credit: Kelly Ardis Illustrator Gita Lloyd shows audience members her thumbnail drawings at the Festival of Books Nov. 3

Media Credit: Kelly Ardis Author J.A. Jance takes the stage at the festival.

Bakersfield College was the host of the third annual Bakersfield Californian Festival of Books Nov. 3. Organized by Donna Hylton, the executive director of the Kern Adult Literacy Council, the festival's proceeds benefited the KALC.
Regarding this year's turnout, Hylton said, "It is huge. It's wonderful. We raised $32,000 last year, and we'll raise more this year."
Featured guests included authors J.A. Jance, Rebecca Buckley, Myron Uhlberg and Cherie Zendarski, as well as illustrator Gita Lloyd. Also at the festival were mini Barnes & Noble and Russo's Books stores, tables with information regarding the KALC and representatives from several publishers. After each guest spoke, they made themselves available for autographs.
In her presentation, Jance explained that she was not allowed in the creative writing class at the University of Arizona. However, her husband at the time was.
"Because I wasn't allowed in the class, I didn't know that some things should be left out of books. My first book was very long," said Jance, whose 37th book will be available this December.
When Lloyd took the stage, she explained the process of illustrating children's books and showed some rough illustrations from a recent "Clifford the Big Red Dog" book.
Jance offered some advice to aspiring authors.
"Write. Everyday. A writer is someone who writes today," she said. "You have to go through life paying attention to life around you."
During her speech, she also said, "Finding someone you don't like makes it a lot easier to write a book."
At the end of the festival, attendees had the chance to participate in an auction for an autographed copy of Jance's upcoming book "Hand of Evil," available Dec. 18.

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