And what 3 books would you take to the desert island?

With some of our student assistants

Shirlene Oboubi, Charles Shields, me, Sara Zarr, Melissa Marr, Nick Abadzis, Cassandra Clare

Me and my wonderful escorts

That's one of the things people got to find out at the author panel of the Montgomery County Teen Book Festival yesterday. (for those of you who weren't there: Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time - so I could use the tesseract to get off the stupid island; Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games - so I could figure out how make traps and snares and how to skin rabbits and possibly grooslings on the stupid island; Libba Bray's Going Bovine - because I'm reading it and it's an existential fountain of fun and if I was on the stupid island at least I could finish it and ponder life)

But seriously- how fun was yesterday? Amazing. I am such a newbie still - and star struck still - so me? on the same stage as Cassandra Clare, Sara Zarr and Melissa Marr? Are you kidding? Pinchmepinchmepinchme. Plus the very talented Charles Shields and the amazing graphic novelist/artist Nick Abadzis (both of whom were my table companions the night before at dinner)? Could I be happier right now? Nope. High school senior and local self-published author and all around really cool girl Shirlene Oboubi served as our master of ceremonies. (I'm not kidding - this girl totally rocks.)

If you came out to see us yesterday, thank you! I loved that my writing workshop sessions were filled. I had a blast signing and visiting with everyone. Librarian Rianne Sanchez made sure that my brand spanking new book trailer got melded into the video. College Park HS librarian Pam Cooper and everyone else on the festival committee - including my own librarian Twyla - made sure that everything we needed - or didn't even know we needed - was at our fingertips. Student esorts were awesome! Can you tell I had a great time? If you came up to talk Dreaming Anastasia with me, you helped make it great day. I like to think that beyond the fun read aspect, maybe somebody will pick up my little novel and find something they need. Maybe they need to read about a girl who discovers how strong she really is inside. Or a guy who desperately needs a second chance and life and is going to get it in a way he might not expect. Or a princess who knows what it's like to lose everything. Fantasy, yes. But the stuff underneath - as real as it can be.

Anyway - what a great day. If you read this blog, you know I'm still mostly on the "do it yourself" end of the author food chain. So getting to hang with those who are on the "I get picked up at the airport by Media Escorts" end of the food chain is always fascinating. It's at those moments that I rush home and email Publicist Paul and say, hey? Did you know about this? Hmmmmm?? And he laughs his "Hey woman I'm doing the best I can for you" laugh. "You live close enough to this event that you picked up your dry cleaning on the way there" he thinks. And then he laughs again.

Til next time...