Greetings from Austin! I'm getting ready for an event tonight with Siobhan Vivian (The List - which I raved about here) and Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver, The Scorpio Races) at Book People. Our editor, the legendary David Levithan, will be moderating and it will be sure to be a fabulous time.
I've been having an absolute blast in Texas. I started off in Dallas and did some awesome schools with the beyond fabulous librarian Rose Brock (it's been decided that Rose and I are basically the same person). Needless to say, I was excited to finally get out there and talk about Take a Bow.
After Dallas I headed to Houston for TeenBookCon. I was on the panel Reality Bites with Siobhan (my new BFF), Lisa McMann (Dead to You), Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray), and Jesse Andrews (Me, Earl and the Dying Girl). I don't want to brag, but we were AWESOME. I don't think I ever laughed that hard on a panel.
The laughter wasn't reserved only for the panels. On our way back from lunch, I saw that they had a bunch of cardboard standees from various YA movie adaptions, including Peeta from The Hunger Games. I gave Lisa my camera and asked her to take a picture of me with Peeta. I ran up to him and well, apparently you weren't supposed to touch the standees since they could break. And as you can see from this brilliant photo, I got in trouble (see the woman waving at me frantically).
Oops. After I was reprimanded, I took another, more appropriate, photo. Notice that I'm not touching Peeta at all.
This is further proof that I really shouldn't be allowed out of my house. Ever. I can report that I pretty much behaved for the rest of the day (mostly). I LOVED meeting everybody at the festival and putting Twitter handles to faces. I also was asked to sign my very first shoe, this made me VERY excited. Thanks Ami!
After tonight in Austin, I'm heading back to Houston for TLA, then more events to come in Portage, WI; Naperville, IL, Cambridge, MA; Atlanta, GA; and Nashville, TN. See my EVENTS page for details. Hope to see you out on the road!
XO, Elizabeth