ALAN

I've always wanted to go to the NCTE/ALAN annual conference, but I never have because it's just way too expensive to travel there. But this year, it's in San Antonio! I am utterly ecstatic. Have you see the list of authors who will be there? Let me just put this out there that if any authors are going to be in San Antonio on the 20th or 21st and want to come do a school visit, please let me know. Melissa Marr came to my (old) school last year and had a great time!

Here are just a few of the awesome authors I can't wait to see:
John Green
Scott Westerfeld
Laurie Halse Anderson
Melissa Marr
M.T. Anderson
Cory Doctorow
Gail Giles
Ellen Hopkins
Justine Larbalestier
David Levithan
E. Lockhart
Susan Beth Pfeffer


Oh, and if any authors want some advice on good local San Antonio things to do or eat or if you want someone to drive you around, I'm also good for that too.

It makes me kind of sad to think that all these fantastic authors are going to be here together in my city and my students won't get a chance to see many of them (I think a few might be doing public appearances).

More Reasons I'd Love to Live in San Francisco

I went on vacation in San Francisco a few years ago and had such an amazing time and cursed the world for making it such an expensive place to live. Now I *really* wish I lived there. Not Your Mothers Book Club always has incredible authors and I'm always so envious. But now they are having two of my all-time favorite YA authors in March (for my birthday!): Frank Portman and David Levithan. I surely hope someone is doing a book signing in NYC during March 16-20 to help console me. Or that they will be making it to Texas some time this year. Somehow I doubt it, though.

My New BFF

This weekend, I went to La$ Vega$ and I met Daria Snadowsky, author of Anatomy of a Boyfriend (which Holly and I both liked). I'm sure most people find meeting authors really neat, but librarians find meeting authors pretty much on par with meeting celebrities. I'm no exception. It was so very cool. I've been trying to figure out what I should write about the whole experience. I mean, should I focus on my personal experience with it all? Should I write about her speech? What would our legions of readers want, I've been asking myself.

Let me start by describing the weekend's Daria Events. On Friday, she spoke at UNLV where my friend directs this gifted program for high school students. So I got to meet her and listen to her presentation and Q&A with the students about writing and her book. Then we met up for coffee on Saturday (although neither of us were drinking coffee...). We talked for hours, and now I'm going to be the maid of honor at her wedding. Just kidding. She has a sister, so I'm just going to be a bridesmaid. Just kidding again. Seriously, we talked for like 2 hours at the coffee shop, and it was just very neat and Daria is super nice and humble and fun to talk to (kind of like what you'd imagine she'd be like when you read her book).

A few of my personal favorite highlights about her book:

• Before Daria came, one of the students told us that her mother took the book away from her and hid it. I immediately thought it was because she objected to some of the sexual frankness in the book, but then it turned out that it's because the student "wouldn't stop reading it." I hope those are the kinds of problems I have when I'm a parent.
• One of the students asked about how she dealt with the rejection letters. She said that when she got her first rejection letter, she went to the mall and bought a pair of Chanel sunglasses. I loved that story because that totally seems like something I would do, console myself with material goods.
• Daria also talked about how she hated getting this long editorial letter outlining all the things she should change about her book. I think the students were really interested in the entire writing, editing, and publishing process (as am I!), but I found this even more interesting because I wasn't aware of this particular phenomenon of a "letter" until recently. Justine Larbalestier wrote recently about how she loves to get her editorial letter. I think if I were a writer that my reaction would be closer to Daria's because who wants to go through the whole writing process and then face criticism and/or more revisions?
  
  Okay, there was so much more said, but I hate to just repeat it all. Look back at our earlier online interview for some more fun writing tidbits. I especially like how she describes how much law school helped her to edit her book.

I thought the coolest thing about having this blog was when authors posted comments or did interviews, but this was way cooler. I'll soon be posting my travel schedule so that other YA authors can let me know when they'd like to meet up for coffee when I come to their city.