Let me just preface this by saying that September has not been kind to me. Somebody hit my car and drove away, my apartment parking lot flooded, the check engine light is on in my car, work is knocking me on my ass, the spiders are back, my best friend’s cat died, and I spent 45 minutes today scraping dried egg off my car. Yeah, that’s right……I can’t even afford to buy eggs to eat and somebody tossed them all over my car. I wish I could have know, I would have stood out there and tried to catch them. Maybe I could have had an egg salad sandwich.
But all of that was made better by the fact that last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the most awesome conference in the history of the world (except of course for the Harry Potter conferences, which will forever remain the best). I went to the YA Literature Conference put on by Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville. I don’t even know if I can find words to describe how awesome it actually was, but I will try.
I knew that Suzanne Collins was going to be there, but I hadn’t looked at the flyer in a long time, so I really couldn’t remember any of the other authors. Imagine my shock when I opened up the schedule and saw that Ingrid Law (the author of Savvy, duh!) was one of the presenters. I literally screamed in the middle of the Holiday Inn Ballroom. Thankfully, my friend Abby was just as excited about YA lit as I was, so she didn’t judge me (at least if she did, she pretended not to).
When I went up to Ms. Law and got her to autograph my book, I actually got a little teary, but I don’t think anyone noticed. It was just so cool to meet her and get to tell her how much I loved her book. You don’t usually get to do things like that in life. During her presentation, she said she just wrote down the first sentence that popped into her head and that became the first sentence of the book. She wasn’t quite sure where the story would go from there, which makes the book all the more amazing. (The first sentence is quite a doozy to just pull out of thin air. You should buy the book and see for yourself what I mean).
Here is a pretty picture of all my books that I got (two of them for free!):
Here is a list of all the people that I got to hear speak:
Suzanne Collins (duh, you should all know who she is)
Ellen Klages (wrote the amazing historical fiction novel The Green Glass Sea and its follow-up that I can’t wait to read White Sands, Red Menace)
Holly Black (wrote the Spiderwick Chronicles and the new graphic novel The Good Neighbors, plus an all around bad ass)
Nancy Werlin (wrote the incredible new book Impossible and made me cry during her speech)
Paula Yoo (cutest woman ever! her speech was so great that I had to buy her book Good Enough……and she played the violin)
Cameron Tuttle (very funny lady who wrote the new book Paisley Hanover Acts Out)
Ingrid Law (Yippee!!)
John Stokes (one of the only remaining members of a group of students who went on strike against segregation, he wrote Students on Strike)
Caroline (B.) Cooney (wrote the Face on the Milk Carton!!!)
All that was crammed into one day (with no time for bathroom breaks). I had a great time and even ran into a friend from library school (Hey John!). I walked away with lots of free stuff and a renewed passion for books. It was worth every penny of the money I spent on it (because my library doesn’t pay for frivilous stuff like that) and I can’t wait to go to the author’s breakfast in February. I hear someone named Meg Cabot is going to be there……….hmmmmm…… where have I heard of her before???
Jen
I will leave you all with pics of my autographed books:
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