FIVE: Great Author Moments

To be perfectly honest I don't go to enough book events to have five author moments from 2010 alone, so instead this is a lineup of author moments from my life. In a (hopefully-but-probably-not) chronological order, here they are...

1. Cindy Pon's book launch for Silver Phoenix. 
The kicker here is that I've never read Cindy's book, but because the launch was close to me and I wanted to buy a copy to giveaway on my blog and because my buddy-buddy-roo Khy was going to be there, I went. And I had a fabulous time. Not only is Cindy Pon an incredibly incredibly sweet person, but her book launch was a ton of fun. There was people! And books! And Khy video taped it!

2. Gayle Forman's event for If I Stay.
This event was a little further away from me, but it was for a book I'd heard awesome things about and I'd actually had some email correspondence with the author (what about? I DON'T REMEMBER). In any case, I decided to skip out on my last couple classes of the day and drive to the event, which was a couple hours away. I was operating on about four hours of sleep that day and had to blast Lady Gaga on repeat to keep myself awake on the drive up. The bookstore was this adorable little children's bookstore in the middle of a very western-y looking town and Khy was there (me and Khy live a few hours apart so we end up going to book signings together fairly oftentimes) and other people were there and Gayle Forman was wonderful. I'd missed the "reading" portion of the event, but she had a Q&A where she answered some questions about the book and afterwards I bought a copy of the book (which, btw, is wonderful and I can't wait for the sequel) and got to talk to her for a while. The message Gayle Forman wrote in my copy of If I Stay when she signed it is absolutely the best note from an author I've ever gotten in a book and I loved meeting her. I loved driving out and blaring Lady Gaga, loved the event and meeting the author and hanging out with Khy, and I loved driving back home, happy and exhausted, after a completely awesome day.

3. Sarah Dessen's signing for Along for the Ride.
It's no secret that I love Sarah Dessen's writing. The Truth About Forever was my first introduction to YA literature -- the book that made me love reading it and want to write it. Since then, I've accumulated every Dessen novel there is and read most of them multiple times. So of course I had to meet Sarah Dessen when I had the chance. I went to the signing/reading with Cindy Pon and had a wonderful time. I did meet Sarah Dessen and talk to her for a couple seconds, though of course I don't remember what I said and I'm sure whatever it was, it sounded stupid.

4. John Green and David Levithan's signing for Will Grayson, Will Grayson.
I haven't read Will Grayson (or much by Levithan, really), but John Green is one of my favorite authors. An Abundance of Katherines made me laugh the way few books have been able to do and Paper Towns is just incredible. Seeing how many people were at this signing was awesome, of course, as was meeting John and hearing him talk about his books. The event was livestreamed (wait... is that a word?) and me and Khy were sitting right next to the computer; a couple of other bloggers said they could hear us talking before the event really got started, which I found hilarious.

5. Heidi R. Kling's meet up for Sea.
This wasn't an actual event. How un-actual was it? There was no reading or official signing, and the bookstore hadn't even gotten their shipment of Sea in for it. But it was awesome all the same. For one thing, it was at the bookstore in Downtown Disney, which gave me a supergreat excuse to drive out to Disneyland (I don't love driving, but I do love Disney) and it was basically just Heidi Kling and a bunch of bloggers sitting and talking. Heidi is every bit as wonderful and friendly as you'd expect her to be and I had a blast talking books with people like Khy and Catt in real life, as well as browsing the bookstore shelves and comparing which books we'd read.

& now five authors I'd love to meet but haven't yet:
Courtney Summers
Maureen Johnson
Susie Day
Lynne Rae Perkins
Sarah Ockler
(and, of course, lots more)