Remember those Scholastic Book Fairs?

It was a sure thing that you’d find the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, ring pops, and the best calendar for the upcoming year covered with photos of cats, dogs or rabbits.

Well, it’s 2024 and these fun book fairs are back in style, except now they’re here for grownups. Who doesn’t love strolling through aisles of tables set up with book displays, knick-knacks, snacks…and a lot of colorful candy?

In Milwaukee, I’ll be attending a book fair organized by @arkwardnerdevents. This time though, I’m not a shopper but an author!

And the chosen theme for the fair?

The 90s!

The 90s? 

Oh, oh!

Back in that decade, I was thick into baby-raising during a blur of sleepless nights, so I had to do some research. However, I was relieved to discover that my research mission was only a flight of stairs down and into our basement. Right away, thanks to my three sons, the 1990s came flooding back into my brain all these years later…

My Basement Sported:

* Beanie Babies

* A CD Boom Box

* Lava Lamps (they made a comeback in the 90s)

* Lots of CDs with Raffi singing the hits…Baby Beluga and my all-time fave – Banana Phone.

* With a little digging, I found those weird red and white plastic balls… Whoops! How could I forget Pokemon?

Not downstairs, but buried in my office closet, I found those once-upon-a-time, brand spanking new GAME BOYS. Oh, what memories those brought back. Getting each kid a Game Boy was a monumental feat in the 90s. It took a band of grandparents to make Christmas extra special that year.   

Even though sinking back into the 90s stirred up a lot of memories of when the kids were little, I managed to recall that there was some time for an exhausted mom to take a break and watch TV. For this wannabe romance writer at the time, I watched and absorbed some of the best romantic movies to come out in the 90s. To this day, these movies are etched in my brain.

SIDE NOTE: Didn’t Etch a Sketch make a comeback in the 90s?

Now an author, I can look back and realize that my current titles have 90s pop culture woven into the stories and they were inspired by some of those fantastic 90s romance movies.

The Artful Bargain was originally seeded by my love of The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. What a scorching hot love scene with those two on a marble staircase with masterpiece paintings and sculptures surrounding them. On. Fire.

It was the caper though, the heist, the twists and turns in the story that made my jaw drop. What fun! And since I’d worked at an art museum, the artsy vibe of the movie planted the idea of writing a caper firmly in my head. It took some time, about a decade or so, but The Artful Bargain came out in 2023 and I’m proud to have written such a fun romantic caper.

For my second book, Book 2 in the Brit Brothers series, To Sense a Passion, a book and a movie shoved me into another path for story ideas. The book Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, which I read in my first book club, landed hard in this budding writer’s heart. Ms. Esquivel’s imagery of chocolate and roses and tears was emotional scenery that I’d never read before.

As well, the movie, Practical Magic layered onto the seeds from Chocolate. If you haven’t read To Sense a Passion, the main character is an aromatherapist and shop owner. Although the shop is in Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin, I always had the visual of the seaside side town and scent shop in Practical Magic floating from my mind into my fingertips while writing it.  

Back in the 90s, watching those favorite movies were only a VCR tape away.

Pop it in and watch it again. Then the DVD’s came…Pop it in and watch it again.

With all the new ways to watch movies that came out in the 90s – it’s no wonder that many of them were imprinted into our brains, but what about the books? Thankfully, Oprah Winfrey launched her Book Club on September 17, 1996, and brought back books and kept us reading.

We can’t forget, the book is always better than the movie.

This weekend, I will certainly party like it’s 1999 at the Awkward Nerd Book Fair.