Today at long last was the day Chris Colfer had his signing at Vromans. I had been looking forward to this for a while (for an indeterminate period of time longer than a week). Much praise to the Vromans staff. I took a picture from the line. It’s an awful picture; blurry and his head is obstructed. Ah well it wasn’t important.
Continue reading “Chris Colfer signed his new book at Vromans, and street pass OC madness”
Tag: authors
Summer of YA: Allen Zadoff, author of Boy Nobody @allenzadoff
I may not post as much about the Summer of YA event that was held today at the Barnes & Noble in beautiful Glendale California. Basically it was a great opportunity to spend some time talking with a bunch of YA authors and I don’t know why you didn’t attend … assuming you didn’t of course. Some of you did attend like me, Alethea and Andrew Smith.
In preparation for today I finished Boy Nobody by Allen Zadoff. Our protagonist is a teenage assassin who infiltrates lives and murders parents. I remember hearing about it when it first came out and I was intrigued by the premise, so I downloaded the sample in iBooks and I was pretty hooked.
Continue reading “Summer of YA: Allen Zadoff, author of Boy Nobody @allenzadoff”
Quarantine Book Two: The Saints (@LexThomasAuthor)
Newest addition to the library is a signed copy of Lex Thomas’s second Quarantine (Quaranteens!) book, The Saints. Saw them at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove.
Lex remembered me from the Ontario Teen Book Fest. I declined to wear my author event jacket because it was just too hot. I should like to think that my author event jacket helps authors remember me but at the same time I never assume that there are reasons for authors to remember me. With a few exceptions of course.
I love to refer to the series as Quaranteens even though it was changed before publication. If you’re unfamiliar basically a high school has been quarantined and all of the students fight amongst themselves for dominance… It’s going to be a trilogy. Book one was The Loners and is already available. Oh…. should have asked that.
I’m not great on coming up on questions for authors so it was great that Lex came prepared for questions.
Ugh. It took me 30 minutes to get over the hill and into Hollywood. Surface street traffic and it didn’t even seem particularly bad.
BEA 2013 Haul post
I find other people posting about all the things they got annoying and obnoxious so of course I’ve done one myself … because when you confess your own hypocrisy it stinks just a little bit less.
I could wait until all of my books come home to me … I mailed some to myself because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to transport them all. These fears may have been unnecessary and since I didn’t pay for the tracking information there’s no way of knowing if those five media mail envelopes will ever arrive. But they were the less important books to me and I felt that losing them wouldn’t be a great loss. Shall we begin? I may also talk about books I purchased on my trip…do people do haul posts on purchases? Of course they do. Exhibitionist shoppers. My goodness I’m becoming some capitalist stooge. Continue reading “BEA 2013 Haul post”
David Sedaris at Aunties Bookstore in Spokane
I was going to write a post about how I saw David Sedaris at a bookstore in Spokane, Washington. I was going to do it soon after seeing him so my memory would be fresh. Well sadly I did not remember to draft a post.
David Sedaris is a humorist and this author appearance was basically a reading with some q&a. He didn’t just read from his new book; he also read from pages in his diary. Which of course suggests that there was some additional value to come see him. He was perhaps a little more randy than I expected… but I’m glad we live in a day and age where it’s not forbidden to make jokes about leaving teeth marks in a persons genitals. It’s fairly safe to say that I enjoyed it.
A downside to David Sedaris was how much time he spent with each person in the signing line so the line moved very slowly. He took the time to draw pictures and find semi-appropriate stickers and he signed all of my books and had a conversation and I think I want to go back and re-read everything.
He did suggest that sometimes he is contractually forbidden from making appearances within a certain radius. So if he was at UCLA, he wouldn’t be able to go to Vromans because it’s within a hundred miles. And that upsets me. UCLA … I didn’t like it when the Festival of Books was on your campus and I don’t like it when you keep David Sedaris all for yourself.
Dear friend, I am writing to you because she said you listen
“I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at the party even though you could have. Please don’t try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don’t want you to do that.” – The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky.
Today at the Ontario Teen Book Fest one of the topics touched upon by Stephen Chbosky during his panel was who is the Friend that Charlie is writing to. We didn’t get a definitive answer. Chbosky reasoned that he finds that sometimes when he hears lyrics and then finds out what the lyrics actually are, the reality usually isn’t as great as the perceived words.
Except for Hotel California by the Eagles.
He used this reasoning to avoid explicitly stating whom Charlie is writing to. He suggested that there are several theories and some of them are better then what he had intended so instead of definitively stating, if he just leaves it open then maybe we can pretend that one of the better hypothesis can be our reality. For example, he liked the idea that Charlie was writing to himself. (And since that was suggested by someone we can assume that’s not what Chbosky originally intended.)
Anyhow my hypothesis and it’s fairly obvious … is that Charlie is writing to Stephen Chbosky. But it’s been a while since I’ve read the book so have no idea how appropriate that is. And in a way I think I like it better not knowing.
The Perks of Being at the Ontario Teen Book Festival 2013 #tbf @StephenChbosky @marburyjack @LexThomasAuthor @LBardugo
Woke up super early this morning (before 7). Well … didn’t finish getting up until after 7. Then I drove Alethea and myself out to … BFE (Ontario). Bought books. Sat through Author panels. Came home. Was very tired. Wrote a post. Wait. Not even a whole post. Wrote a few fragmented sentences filling in for a post. And then wrote some more. Then I deleted that and wrote some more. Why am I telling you about my writing process? Probably because I’m tired and semi coherent. But after listening today’s authors I have decided that the best way to write is to write and a lot of authors don’t outline before writing so … here we go.
THE ONTARIO TEEN BOOK FESTIVAL WAS FUN, FREE, INFORMATIVE AND A GREAT WAY TO LISTEN TO AUTHORS TALK ABOUT THE CRAFT.
OH YOU’RE KIDDING ME: In which I discover @ned_vizzini has signed stock at BN Glendale AFTER I have purchased his new book
Interrupting my anecdotes of #BookFest for a quick post about a surprise discovery I made tonight…I went to Barnes & Noble in Glendale tonight because they sent me a coupon which was about to expire. So I went in and bought LEGO. (Be glad I don’t blog about me and LEGO).
While I was there I noticed a display for House of Secrets and there was an autographed copy sticker on it. Continue reading “OH YOU’RE KIDDING ME: In which I discover @ned_vizzini has signed stock at BN Glendale AFTER I have purchased his new book”
I was late but I still got a signature from Tim Federle @TimFederle #BookFest
I’m about to reveal a secret about attending the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC that I found useful and sadly will probably forget next year. But this is something I learned the hard way, by being late to the first author panel I wanted to see which included Tim Federle and Stephan Pastis. (Apologies to Ellis Weiner, who was also on the panel but whose presence doesn’t add to my narrative)
TL; DR: Stephan Pastis has more fans but I like Tim Federle more so I can live with the choices that I made.
Continue reading “I was late but I still got a signature from Tim Federle @TimFederle #BookFest”
House of Secrets Panel Ned Vizzini @ned_vizzini, Chris Columbus #BookFest
TL; DR: I attended the panel with Ned Vizzini and Chris Columbus at LATFOB and just missed out on the opportunity to get a copy of their new book, House of Secrets. Continue reading “House of Secrets Panel Ned Vizzini @ned_vizzini, Chris Columbus #BookFest”