Read By The Sea: A Win for the Newbie!

Feel free to smack me when you read this: This the first year I attended the Read By The Sea festival of authors in River John.
(Ouch, oooh, ow, ouch! Okay, okay! Uncle!)
I'm glad I did and I'm sorry I hadn't gone before. 

Went with friend, co-worker and fellow avid reader, Jane.

Featured authors were Rebecca Silver Slaytor, Vincent Lam, Phil Hall and Marni Endicott. Three novelists and a poet. They were introduced and after reading, interviewed. 
 

Rebecca Silver Slayter reading from her book, which I happen to be reading.

The big deal of our day was winning the bag of books! It almost didn't happen.
Instead of buying one book, by the featured poet, Phil Hall, I decided to gamble and spend that twenty bucks on two arm-lengths of raffle tickets (one arm-length was $10).
When the time came for the raffle draw, Jane had one arm, I had the other. They drew numbers for each of the four authors' books and none of our numbers came up. Then they called out the number for the bag of books and the first few numbers matched the first few on mine.
"Do you have the number?" I asked Jane after checking mine.
"Nope," she said and showed me her tickets all in a tight little clutch. She pulled a few tickets out so I could see the number. They were in descending order.
"What are the numbers at the other end?" I asked as the MC called out the numbers for the second time. Going once, going twice...
"That's the number!" Jane hollered and ripped the ticket OFF HER ARM OF TICKETS so that I could claim my bag of books.
That was way too close.