Mickey Waffles and other NCTE highlights

NCTE rocked! I hope to be able to participate in this conference each year for a long time to come. Thank you to all the English teachers and teachers in training who came to my signing at the Sourcebooks booth and who came to our panel. I have huge love for our topic: "The Other Happily Ever After: Empowering Readers Through a Re-tooling of the Female Hero Journey" Our roundtable conversations wandered far and wide: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Macbeth and Beowulf and Wide Sargasso Sea and Scarlet Letter and Twilight and Hunger Games and all the other wonderful YA out there with female heroes. We argued and talked and chewed on the female journey and literary works vs commercial and how marketing often dilutes the journey for the romance (ie - Team Peeta vs. Team Gale) and generally reminded ourselves of how all of us - teachers, writers, readers - need to be conscious of the subtext. It was heavenly to spend 90 plus minutes in this academic setting. (Okay being at Disney World didn't hurt, either) And yay to conference goers who are also bloggers and Twitter followers who introduced themselves to me! Windowpane Memoir, Angela from Dark Faerie Tale, Jennie Smith...

So thank you to NCTE. And thank you to my co-panelists: Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, Rosanne Parry, Danielle Joseph, Jen Dutton, (who asked our waiter Ismael at breakfast, "Do you tell people 'Call me Ishmael" in an impressively literary reference to Moby Dick) Lauren Bjorkman, Cheryl Renee Herbsman, Edie Hemingway. They are fabulous authors and humans. And great company for safaris and dinners and a late show of HP. And to Suzanne Morgan Williams - on another panel but still taking time to come support us - may you live long and prosper, my dear!

And so a little photo show. Check out me and Sarwat Chadda (Devil's Kiss. Dark Goddess) who came to say hi and get a Haunted arc! I am such a fan girl. Luckily my gaping jaw and babbling fangirly words did not deter this delightful bloke.

After dinner at Animal Kingdom Lodge: Suzy Williams, Janet Fox, Sydney Salter, me, Rosanne Parry


Thank you Waiter Ismael at Maya Grill for letting me order my Mickey Waffles off the kid's menu. Plus bacon! And Mickey's head in the butter.

Yes! Me and Sarwat Chadda - who also writes about Baba Yaga and the Romanovs and other wonderful stuff

Signing HAUNTED arcs at the Sourcebooks booth. Thank you Kay and Melissa for all your support

And the rest of the pics are: My sign at the Sourcebooks booth, me and my Mickey icecream bar, and me and Janet Fox with the bug from It's a Bug's Life at Animal Kingdom.