Joy Preble's Blog, page 28

Book 3 enters the world today.

I'd contemplated writing about my crazy publishing journey again -- the 4 editors and three publicists, and two agents and endless orphaning. The struggle that has sometimes felt harder than it needed to be. But if you read this blog or follow my career and books, mostly, this is old news. You know that despite it all, ANASTASIA FOREVER is on shelves today from Sourcebooks Fire and in digital form, and people are buying and downloading and reviewing and finding out what happens in the end to Anne and Ethan and Tess and Ben and the witch Baba Yaga and all the rest.

If you're new to the series, let me quickly catch you up. This way, you can dive into book 3 and then go back to the others, which I totally know you want to do:


DREAMING ANASTASIA series synopsis: The DREAMING ANASTASIA series is the saga of Anne Michaelson, a sixteen year old Chicago girl who discovers that she is connected through both line of descent and destiny to a complex mystery of love, betrayal and revenge. Her own family in turmoil from the recent death of her brother David to cancer, Anne finds herself dreaming repeatedly of a girl trapped in a room, who in turn is dreaming of her family’s murder. When Anne collides at school with handsome, mysterious Ethan, everything sets in motion. Dark powers of elemental control rise in Anne. Ethan tells her that she’s been dreaming of Anastasia Romanov, kept captive all these years by the Russian witch Baba Yaga.  Anne is somehow the one who can free her. And Ethan – well, he’s a member of a secret Brotherhood and he’s been immortal since Anastasia’s capture. Free one. Free the other. But Anne discovers that there’s a lot more at stake. Russian fairy tale figures come to life: rusalki and witches and Koschei the Deathless. People who will stop at nothing to keep their power and eternal lives. And a blood line connection to everyone and everything. As Anne works first to free Anastasia and then solve the mystery that has held part of her family captive for decades, she finds herself falling for Ethan, who may or may not be someone she can trust. The series travels backward and forward in time and place, in the real world and in Baba Yaga’s forest as Anne and Ethan race to uncover long hidden secrets and darkest of magicks before it’s too late.  In this thrilling tale of secrets within secrets and truths within lies, the reader quickly realizes that history never tells you everything.
I am truly excited for people to read. There's a happily ever after, but it's hard won. And I think for this story, that's just the way it needs to be.
Beyond that this morning, I am filled with buckets of gratitude. So many, many people are solidly in my world now that I did not know or dream of just a scant few years ago. It has truly taken a village -- and not just because of my editor revolving door! This I think is the greatest and fullest miracle -- that my world has cracked open wide in the best of ways.

I'm just back from SCBWI LA and many of them were there: editors and agents and so many, many author friends both new and old. The artist community here in Texas -- in Houston and Austin in particular: critique partners and my fellow alums of the Class of 2k9, who have for the most part remained my dearest of friends. Booksellers of all stripes and sizes and here I will mention a specific: the generous and gracious Valerie Koehler and Cathy Berner at Blue Willow Books who have helped launch my career in ways both big and small.

And bloggers. I thank my blogger community a lot. Because their devotion to books and literacy and authors is fierce. And my life is enriched by their passions and support.

Do you get it, dear reader? We're all in this together: the storytellers and the readers and illustrators and those who sell and promote and design our books. The first time I met Laurie Halse Anderson and told her I had my first book coming out, she autographed my copy of Catalyst with "Welcome to the tribe."

One of the ongoing conceits of the DREAMING ANASTASIA series is the Russian matryoshka doll -- those nesting dolls that fit one in the other, the same figure over and over, only smaller. In metaphor, it is stories within stories, the oldest type of storytelling that there is: the frame story. This has become my metaphor, too. My own story within the stories of all these wonderful people who are now in my life, all tucked inside each other, linked, repeated. Wonderful.

If you're in the Houston area, come on over to Blue Willow Bookshop on Memorial at Dairy Ashford this Saturday, 8/11 at 2PM. Check here for more info.  Join me in celebrating ANASTASIA FOREVER. Eat a cupcake.

Cheers, my lovelies!!

Wow! So many great entries to the ANASTASIA FOREVER giveaway! It's a good thing they all went into the contest hat because on my own I would never have been able to pick just 3 of you wonderful people! And if you didn't win this time, I'll be doing another contest in a few weeks.

Plus, the books are sneaking into stores now.... I just saw them on my BN New Teen Fiction shelf yesterday with MY OWN EYES!! (And at first I didn't see they were there because someone was standing and reading one in front of the little stack!)

But to the point...
DRUM ROLL PLEASE..........

Prize #1 -- an arc of ANASTASIA FOREVER goes to Ginny!!
Prize #2 -- a book of ANASTASIA FOREVER goes to Valia !!!
Prize # 3 -- a book of ANASTASIA FOREVER and a t shirt goes to Kai !!!

If you would all please email me your mailing addresses.

And if anyone else who entered who like bookmarks for entering, I'd love to send you some so please email me your address as well.

xoxoJoy

Maybe it's the Olympic spirit. Maybe it's my excitement that the last book of the DREAMING ANASTASIA trilogy is almost here, which is like this total, wonderful miracle. Maybe it's because I'm just that nice.

But I'm starting my COUNTDOWN TO ANASTASIA FOREVER ON 8/7 TODAY!!

All you need to do is comment about why you are excited for the last book of the trilogy. Not sure what to say? Make up something witty. Suck up to me. Be clever!

There are three possible prizes. You get to see what they are in the video below. Yes, my hair is in a pony tail and I'm wearing my glasses. Live with it.

Contest is ON until 8/1 at midnight. I will announce winners on 8/2 before I leave for SCBWI LA!

Here's what you can win!! All prizes include bookmarks, provided by my lovely publisher, Sourcebooks!

Counting down to the ANASTASIA FOREVER release on 8/7 and the release event at Blue Willow Bookshop on 8/11 at  2PM in Houston. I'll be doing some giveaways to celebrate, starting tomorrow!!so stay tuned for the ANASTASIA FOREVER gift pack, which yeah, is as fun as it sounds.

Speaking of fun, did you know that there is a Paris, TX? Did you know that if you go there to research for a book you're writing, that you will see this?
Yup - there is an Eiffel Tower in Paris Texas. And it has a cowboy hat on the top. (full disclosure, I'd have taken more pictures but it was about 110 degrees outside.

To get to Paris TX from Houston, you also stop in Buffalo, where you can buy really amazing fried pies, with breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert varieties at the Original Fried Pie Shop. Which of course we did.

Just finished reading Nikki Loftin's The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, a fabulous middle grade which I'll tell you more about very soon. It arrives on 8/25 and I am so excited that Nikki will be stopping by the blog for an interview.

And thank you, thank you!! to both the publicity team at Sourcebooks as well as the wonderful bloggers who are currently participating in the DREAMING ANASTASIA series Deleted Scenes Blog Tour. I posted the Anne/Ethan love story essay in my last blog post.  Today I'm going to give you a deleted scene from HAUNTED, which is book 2. Ultimately I felt this scene wasn't quite working the way I needed it to, but what I'd been going for was this romantic tension between and Anne and Ethan, who's just returned from a number of months in Europe to find that Anne has a boyfriend, Ben. I wanted them to be trying but failing to talk this out-- because of course they really love each other but time and circumstance has worked against them- and what I ended up with was this scene where Anne kept eating. It has always amused me, this little deleted scene. Enjoy! And let me know what you think!


Thursday, 4:30 PM, Ethan
            “Are you going to finish that?” I point to the remains of the enormous pile of onion rings that Anne has consumed along with the cheese and sausage pizza we just split at the little hole in the wall pizza place so close to the El that you can feel the trains rumbling by overhead as you eat. We’re in Evanston where I’ve rented an apartment. But taking Anne there felt like a mistake. A restaurant seemed safer. Pizza seemed safer. I just had no idea that she ate like this.            “Well, yeah. You need to try some, Ethan.” She plucks one off the plate, shoves it into my hand, then passes me the bowl of ranch dressing. “And dip them in this. It’s killer.”            I try it. It’s not half bad.            We both chew some more, both pretending that this isn’t awkward and that we don’t both remember being chased by Baba Yaga and Viktor and Dimitri to these very El tracks not that long ago. Or that it was on one of those trains that Anne figured out how to work the magic lacquer box that let us access Baba Yaga’s forest and open the door to her hut so we could save Anastasia. It doesn’t take much for me to remember how Anne looked when Viktor almost killed her that day. Or how I felt realizing what a fool I’d been to trust him.            It’s easier to eat pizza and onion rings and talk about what I’m going to study now that I’m back. Of course we both know that’s not really why I’m back. But neither of us has worked up to the truth.             “See. I knew you’d like it.” She dips another ring in the bowl of ranch, opens her mouth, pops it in, then closes and chews.            “Remember when you made me tea? You still do that? The whole loose tea, tea pot thing?” she asks me around her mouth of onion ring.            “Yes.”            “Well that’s good to know.”            “We need to talk, Anne.”            “We are talking, Ethan.”            I frown at her.             “I’m being difficult, right? That’s what you’re thinking. Anne’s being difficult.”            “Possibly.”            “That’s what Tess keeps telling me, too. Well, maybe she doesn’t use that specific word. But that’s what she means.”            “Anne.”            “Ethan.”            I signal the waitress for a check. This is going nowhere. I need to find out what’s really been going on with her. I need to tell her what I’ve seen. What I suspect. Everything I’ve kept from her in hopes that maybe I could keep it from coming. I am, it seems, no less foolish than ever.            “You know they make great cannoli here,” Anne says as she stabs her fork into the last onion ring and dunks it in the bowl of dressing.            I fish some bills from my pocket and hand them to the waitress who’s returned with the check.  “You’re all set,” I tell her. I stand, pull Anne from her chair while she’s still chewing and guide her from the restaurant. Another train barrels by overhead.            “Let’s go out by the lake,” I say. “We’ll walk. I’ll talk. You’ll listen. And we’re going to figure this out, okay. Really. We are.”            “Ben loves me, Ethan. Did you know that?”            Her face is suddenly serious. Somewhere all this onion ring eating has been about this.            “Does he?”             “Yeah, he does.”            She pauses, clearly on the verge of saying something more. It occurs to me, certainly not for the first time, how very young she still is.            “I’m sorry that he’s been dragged into this, Anne.”            “He has, hasn’t he?” She swallows. I catch a glimpse of the Anne I really know – as much as I can say I know her. The one who’s smart and funny and brave. The one I kissed a number of times before I left for Europe and who is now seeing a boy named Ben she says loves her.            “Sucks to be him, huh?” she adds.            Actually, I think, it doesn’t.           

My beautiful, yummy author copies of ANASTASIA FOREVER came this week. Here they are:

And a number of equally wonderful, yummy (not that I am eating them whole!) bloggers have signed on not only for the ANASTASIA FOREVER blog tour next month, but also for July's Deleted Scenes tour, which is going on right now. There isn't an exact schedule so you'll have to be on your toes. Today for example, Mundie Moms is hosting an Anne /Ethan kiss scene that my original editor has me delete from DREAMING ANASTASIA. You really do want to check it out here!

Along with the deleted scenes, bloggers have the option to post this following little musing on the Anne/Ethan Romance, which I present for you today. Let me know what you think!!


What’s Love Got to Do with It?: The Anne/Ethan Romance
Joy Preble
 The guiding force of the DREAMING ANASTASIA series is the relationship between Anne and Ethan. Anne knows from the second she catches blue-eyed Ethan stalking her at the ballet that there is just something about him. And in fact, he proceeds to turn her life upside and sideways because it is Ethan who peels back Anne’s normal world and reveals a world of Russian fairy tales brought to life, of a hidden princess and an illegitimate royal son driven by vengeance. When they touch – and I always knew that their story would begin with a physical touch setting things in motion—everything changes.
Anne is no longer just the girl who dances ballet and goes to school and mourns the death of her brother to cancer. She is a girl with power to save a princess, power to right ancient wrongs and ultimately, the power to break a curse that is holding her birth grandmother captive. But power comes with a steep price. And when Anne accepts Baba Yaga’s bargain so she can save Ethan in book 2, she steps into the witch’s forest in a way she has up until then refused to do. Of course, I wanted her to do this for love, even if she has trouble admitting that’s what it is.
This is problem for Anne and Ethan: they do not come easily to loving each other. Or rather, Ethan comes easily to loving Anne, even if he feels that he does not deserve her or a second chance at life. Which is exactly what she gives him when she rides out of the witch’s forest with Anastasia, allowing Ethan to regain his mortality. While Viktor yearns to live forever, Ethan wants only to have what he lost for a cause that was never what he believed it to be: to live and die in the proper time. That he has found the love of his life makes him both deliriously happy as well as guilty as hell.
And Anne, well, she’s a smart girl. Even when she’s not, she has Tess watching her back, making sure she sees things as they are. Anne sees loving Ethan as an impossibility. He is too old even if he looks young. He has secrets and a long, long past. She is only sixteen. And yet I think she loves him from the moment he tells her his story. But she holds back; she is indecisive. In fact, these traits hurt her in all aspects of her life. She has trouble committing. Ethan, on the other hand, is an all-in kind of guy.
So what did I do to these two? I made them inhabit a reverse fairy tale. It is Anne who ends up saving Ethan over and over. It is Anne who is the hero. And ultimately, it is Ethan (no spoilers for book 3 quite yet) who needs redemption and forgiveness before he and Anne can be together. A happily ever after, but hard won. And not without suffering and sacrifice. This is after all, a Russian fairy tale. No one knows endurance like the Russians.
And so it goes: Ethan and Anne, circling and circling love, each running from the other, each doing the hero’s job. The question becomes, will they figure out that they belong together before it’s too late?
Of course they will!
But with these two, love isn’t simple. I think that makes them equal parts of smart and stupid. Not forbidden love. Not crazy love where the passion burns out everything else—and I think we all need some of that in our lives.
When Anne and Ethan finally figure out that they belong together, it will be a love that entwines them like two puzzle pieces, marveling at how perfectly and easily they fit. And how foolish they were not to know it.

So the countdown to ANASTASIA FOREVER has begun. Less than a month until 8/7. Book 3 enters the world. Time to celebrate!

Please come on over to Blue Willow Books in Houston on Memorial at Dairy Ashford on 8/11 at 2 PM for the book launch. For full info click here.  There will be yummy cupcakes baked by my friend Amanda. And some of my Anastasia Street Team members will be there wearing these:
Yeah, I know -- they're amazing! Thank you Webb Uniforms for helping me create the kick-butt ANASTASIA FOREVER tees!

And I will be giving away at least one more .... okay maybe two... at the launch event!

Maybe I'll even give away one on this blog.... maybe I'll give an entire ANASTASIA FOREVER gift pack in August... hint... hint...

Other stuff:

Excited to be doing writing workshops/author appearances at two libraries:I'll be at Huntsville Public Library this Thursday 7/12 at 4:30!
And I'll be at Bay City Public Library on 7/26 most of the afternoon for their 100th anniversary celebration!

If you are in either of these areas, please come on by.

Reading GONE GIRL right now by Gillian Flynn.... oh my! When both narrators are clearly unreliable, it's a mind -f--- of wonderful proportions. Another book that I was fortunate to snag at BEA and it's signed! And its deliciously dark. Oh yeah.

Last night on the way home from SCBWI meeting, the fabulous Kristin Rae (aka -KristinCreative) caught me up to speed on the wonderful world of K-Pop. So yes, the drive home from Houston goes faster when you're caffeine up on Coke Zero and listening to Korean Pop bands on her iPhone. Seems there are Korean dramas I can watch, too -- with subtitles. So who else knows about this? I sense a new addiction coming on.... which is scary because Top Chef Master is about to return. And I'm not all caught up yet with Lost Girl season 2. And yes, I'm hanging in there with Bunheads. Plus Awkward Season 2 and then there's Teen Wolf... and the train wreck that is the RHONY....

But okay - go ahead and scream at me: We rented The Artist and while it is definitely a party trick, I kept dozing off, waking up to comment: This is like A Star is Born, yeah? Wait! Didn't wasn't that scene in Citizen Kane? Hey there! Didn't this all get covered in Sunset Boulevard. (Yes, I'm film literate-ish) Anyone?

Excited for SCBWI LA which is coming up soon!

And mostly today, I'm excited that Annie and Augie are back tonight on Covert Affairs.
Yeah, I'm kinda addicted.

But until then it's back to work on the WIP. Not telling about it quite yet. Just a couple words: Mystery. Vegas. Elvis. Okay that was three words.

Til next time...

Been squeezing in some reading the past few weeks. Started on the second book in Holly Black's wonderful CurseWorkers series. Doing some fairy tale research for a project that I may possibly want to attempt down the road. Finally got to Inside Out and Back Again by Thannha Lai, which is a beautifully written novel in verse about a girl and her family who immigrate to America after the fall of Saigon. It's a quick read, but one I'll probably come back to more than once.

And two arcs that I was lucky to get at BEA, both by authors that I had the pleasure to meet and chat with.
The first one that I read last week is
Oh how I love this book. Rebecca Stead in the same distinct style as her Newbery winner When You Reach Me, has written a story whose mystery unfolds in steady, tiny increments. It is a short, spare book but one that is a true delight, and I fell in love with Georges.

Here's what Amazon says:
When seventh grader Georges (the S is silent) moves into a Brooklyn apartment building, he meets Safer, a twelve-year-old coffee-drinking loner and self-appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer's first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend?

Liar & Spy is an inspired, often-funny story about destiny, goofy brilliance, and courage. Like Stead's Newbery Medal-winning When You Reach Me, it will keep readers guessing until the end.


LIAR AND SPY will be out on August 7th, the same day as ANASTASIA FOREVER, which somehow makes me happy.

And now I'm reading this:
Libba Bray has done it again. She has set a story of magic and mystery against the workings of a very distinct time and place-- in this case the 1920's. I'm going to want to talk about this book more when I've finished it, but for now let me say that I'm in awe. I'm in love. THE DIVINERS is dense with period details and that takes a bit of getting used to, but I love it and as you read you begin to feel the cumulative and genius effect of what Libba is doing. Not only is she working her mystery story: a series of grisly occult murders in NYC, but she is also developing her characters: main character Evie O'Neill, kicked out of Zenith OH to stay with her Uncle Will who runs an occult museum (nicknamed the Museum of Creepy Crawlies) in an old mansion in NYC; and others, a lot of others, all of whom will most likely turn out to be Diviners -- to have special powers that can read objects or see beyond the pale in some way and hopefully foil the great evil brewing in NYC. But the story has a growing subtext as well, made personal by the loss of Evie's brother James in WWI, the brother she dreams about and longs for. Bray has created a book that tangibly works the dark side of the 20's -- the loss and longing and emptiness after the disillusionment of the Great War. The rebellion and the rule-tossing and all-in desire of the young to burn the old and embrace the new. But she also touches on the emptiness of that as well. All new with no old is a scary place. And Libba Bray brings every bit of it to play: art and music and dance and language and booze and clothing.


THE DIVINERS -- and I'm about 300 pages in of a 600 page book which is only the 1st in a series!-- is like being wonderfully swallowed into the 1920's. It is Gatsby on steroids in the best of ways. With more hopeful romance, a truly frightening killer, and an actual hero or two. Love. Love. Love. Will report more soon.


In other news: 
1. It is just over a month until ANASTASIA FOREVER on 8/7/2012!
Mark your calendars for the launch party at Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston on 8/11 at 2 PM.
 I am so excited that they are hosting the event. I heart Blue Willow. A million times over.

2. The fabulous SOHO PRESS was promoting THE SWEET DEAD LIFE at ALA in Annaheim. More arcs were given away! I am so excited that sometimes I think my head is going to fly off my shoulders and launch into orbit. TSDL is coming out May 14, 2013, btw. An exact date!
Here are some pictures that my intrepid cowgirl agent, Jen Rofe took for me:

Above is agent Jen with my Soho Press editor, the brilliant Daniel Ehrenhaft.
And here is TDSL, sitting in amazingly good company at the Soho booth at ALA!

3. Also, if you look at that last picture, at the book on the left, the one titled WHO DONE IT? See it? Well guess what? It's a mystery anthology and it's the February book for Soho Teen in 2013 and I have a short little story in there, too! Yes, in a book created by Jon Scieszka!! With contributors including John Green, Lauren Oliver, Libba Bray, Rebecca Stead, Lauren Myracle, Mo Willems, Dave Eggers and more. Plus tiny nobody me. And all proceeds will be going to 826nyc, the fabulous literacy non-profit founded by Dave Eggers.  Yeah, I think I peed myself about this one.

I think that's enough for one day!
til next time...

Mostly I'm about to let my brand spanking new ANASTASIA FOREVER book trailer speak for itself! But let's give a round of virtual applause for Marianne Nowicki, introduced to me a few years ago by author friend Jen Dutton (Freaked, Stranded). Marianne has now created trailers for all three of the DREAMING ANASTASIA novels. This one was particularly fun because I got to write the script! I know you will agree with me that Marianne has this amazing sense of how to visually convey the emotions of a novel. You can find out more about her and her NoWicki Productions here.

And special surprise! Want to read the first 3 chapters? Click HERE.

And now let's watch the trailer! And if you like it, let me know. Post a link if the mood strikes you. Tell a friend. Put your laptop down in Sbux and press play. Or just enjoy. :)

So where do Texas writers go when 12 of us gather for a retreat? A cabin the woods. A cabin decorated by someone who really really likes to hunt and kill animals and stuff them and put them on display like this:
and like this:
But it was okay because we all wrote and wrote and wrote and ate and then wrote and wrote some more without that pesky internet to distract us.

See how happy we look about our productivity?
So now I'm wallowing happily in the honeymoon phase of a spanking brand new project. Yay! So thank you to my cohorts in cabin in the woods crime: Jessica Anderson, PJ Hoover, Jo Whittemore, Nikki Loftin, Corey Oakes, Bethany Hegedus, Jenny Moss, Kari Anne Holt, Stephanie Pellegrin, Emma Virjan, Salima Alikhan and Jenny's daughter Christine!

And tomorrow -- huge excitement -- the ANASTASIA FOREVER book trailer! Some super sekrit special bloggers and some of my ANASTASIA FOREVER street team will be helping me kick off the countdown to August by 'touring' the trailer! So wonderful. So come back Tuesday!

Yeah, the title is your teaser. Yeah, I'm going to make you read a bit first.

I thought I knew publishing trade shows. I'd been to ALA and TLA, after all. I knew there would be lines and arcs and a lot of people doing business. But I had no idea of size and intensity of Book Expo of America, otherwise known as BEA. If what I saw this past week is any indication, the publishing business is alive and well in its many different forms and incarnations and optimism abounds. Good news for us all.

Now to the fun stuff.

I had two main reasons for going to BEA for the first time this year. The main one is that I was signing arcs of my YA novel THE SWEET DEAD LIFE, which comes out May 2013 from Soho Press's new Soho Teen imprint! This was hugely exciting. Here are some pictures so you can feel like you were there with me:
Here I am signing arcs at the Soho Press booth. Thank you to everybody who stopped by. We ran out of arcs, which totally thrilled me! If you can't tell by my smile, I LOVE this book.
 Here you can see the cover behind me! And this is Daniel Ehrenhaft, my intrepid and brilliant Soho Press editor.Not pictured is the Soho's truly amazing publisher, Bronwen Hruska.Did you know that both Dan and Bronwen are also authors? Very cool. This is Dan again, in his Soho Teen lair, plotting Soho domination. And possibly decorating ideas for that wall behind him.
And in a delightful surprise, I discovered when I arrived that my other publisher, Sourcebooks, had also included my upcoming YA novel, ANASTASIA FOREVER (which you all know as book 3 of the DREAMING ANASTASIA series and which will be out on August 7th), in their display! So when I popped over to the truly gorgeous Sourcebooks booth, here is what I found: Yes! Look at that pretty red ANASTASIA FOREVER cover, next to THE LIES THAT BIND, which is book 2 of the LIAR SOCIETY by my Sourcebooks' pals, Lisa and Laura Roecker! And then I found one of the nicest people on the planet, my Sourcebooks' editor, Leah Hultenschmidt And Leah showed me this ginormous blow up of the cover of WHO I KISSED, the upcoming fall YA by the delightful Janet Gurtler
Do you have any idea how lucky I feel about all this and how grateful? Words cannot express. Truly. Also a HUGE THANKS to all the bloggers (including the Girls in the Stacks and Galleysmith Michelle who I finally got to meet!) and readers and librarians and booksellers and publishing folks who came to see me at the Soho booth. It's all about you, this book writing thing. Really, it is.
Yes, I know you're still waiting for me to explain the title! Be patient. I'm almost there.
One of the other totally rocking things about BEA, is that you get to meet all sorts of really famous and medium famous and fascinating people. And occasionally just the strange guy on the bench waiting for the E train. But that's another story.
So you discover that signing books along with you (well, in the same convention center, and that counts, right?) are celebs like Molly Ringwald and Rachael Ray and that psychic John Edward (not the politician, who if he was a psychic might have been able to avoid a lot of trauma) and even Teresa from the NJ Housewives and Kirstie Alley and Kristi Yamaguchi and even Steven Colbert and folks like that. And also this guy here: Yes, Chris Colfer from Glee! MCing the Children's Author Breakfast, along with Walter Dean Meyer and John Green and Lois Lowey and Kadir Nelson
And at that breakfast, Lois Lowry (yes, she wrote THE GIVER) gave a speech that made me cry. And John Green observed that we already know how to write novels and that as much fun as all those apps are, to him, reading books is not something that we should be able to do while doing something else. Meaning that while the hypertext imbedded in the e book might be interesting, it is distracting us from our personal and intimate and individual engagement with the text. Food for thought, gentle reader!
And books! Oh the books that I was lucky enough to get and the authors I was lucky enough to meet or hear at panels: Jennifer Weiner, Rebecca Stead, Justin Cronin, Libba Bray, Melissa Marr and so many more that I can't list all the names or I'd be typing til next Tuesday! Luckily I was able to ship books home. 
Even got to go to a couple of cool parties. Yes, me!
At the Sourcebooks party, I got to hang with two other Sbooks amazing authors: Zoraida Cordova (Vicious Blue series) and Leanna Renee Hieber (Darker Still and the upcoming The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart) Plus more time with editor Leah and publicity guru Derry Wilkens, who has some fun plans for ANASTASIA FOREVER up her fashionable Manhattan sleeves.
And we had cool cookies and cake pops!

And the Soho Press party was in this wonderful bookstore cafe in yes, Soho, called Housingworks. The kind of party where everyone is pretty darn well known and then there I am -- slightly known. Known to a few, like my editor and the publicist and author Michael Northrup because he was my YART speed dating partner at TLA where we both had to wear cowboy hats. And yes, when in the crowd of very well known people and the excitement and the meeting of people whose books I love (people like Maureen Johnson and Mo Willems among others) I clutched my flimsy plastic wine glass too tightly. And when it cracked and ultimately fell, spilling wine on my cowboy boots and splashing author Emily Lockhart's toes, she simply took the napkin from editor Dan and wiped the floor. 
Yes, Emily Lockhart. You were that gracious. And I am your fangirl for life.
There was sightseeing too. Here I am in Times Square
And I hung out a lot with my fellow YA Outside the Lines author Wendy Delsol, who also has a new book (FLOCK) coming out soon. This is Wendy signing arcs at the Candlewick booth
And we all ate a lot of good food, like this:
Pasta, pasta, pasta at Becco

And I saw a bunch of New York and had coffee with a former student who now works for TOR books in marketing and I went to the top of the Empire State Building even though I've done that already and also decided that it was finally time to go back to the World Trade Center which I did early Thursday morning so that I could see the Memorial and also this: And as much as I had wondered how I felt about it, it turned out that I felt really proud and good and hushed inside. On a personal level, I know what it's like to pull yourself out of the ashes of bad stuff up to good and although I had thought that I didn't want another tall building built at Ground Zero, I think I was very wrong about that after all.
In short: I want to go back to BEA next year. I hope that I do!