By the time you read this blog, most of the Jaunty Quills will be in San Francisco or on our way there. The big RWA conference starts tonight with the literacy signing. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone. I couldn’t go last year, so this will be a time to catch up with friends and what’s going on in the romance industry. If you’re at the literacy signing tonight, stop by and say hi.

Last week I took a day off writing and did something exciting. USF and I bought a new car. Well, it’s not new. It’s a 2005 Mercury Mariner.

I know people buy cars everyday, but the unique thing about this was that we bought the car at an auction. We’d never bought such a big item at an auction before, but we had the cash and we were curious, so we decided to give it a try.

We got a list of the cars that would be auctioned off the night before and researched the blue book value and which had the best gas mileage. Since these were all SUVs, none had great gas mileage, but we wanted something that wouldn’t bankrupt us.

The next day we went to the auction and looked at all the cars on our list. Some we crossed off because the interior didn’t look good or their were dents on the exterior or we (I) didn’t like the color.

Finally the auction started. It takes place in an open warehouse, and there are three lanes with cars and trucks going through—three separate auctions going on at the same time.

We had a few SUVs on our list that we didn’t want to buy. We just wanted to see what they’d go for. They went for more than we’d expected, which was kind of disappointing because we’d set our budget and couldn’t offer more.

Finally, a few of the SUVs we were interested in came up, and we started to bid. Unfortunately, the auctioneer said we bid too low. The lease company auctioning the vehicles had a minimum it would accept. We waited as SUV after SUV went by and finally we saw the Mercury Mariner we’d been thinking about.

USF asked if he should go for it, and I said yes. And about a minute later it was “Sold!” How crazy! All of a sudden we owned a new car.

I know sometimes books are sold at auctions (not in warehouses, I imagine), and I wonder if those authors and the publishers bidding get as excited as we did when we were buying our new vehicle.

Have you ever bought anything at an auction?