This weekend was fantastic. Exhausting but fantastic. Saturday I was selling books at the Mission Viejo Book Festival. (Side note: Latitude 33 Bookstore closed at the end of August, but I have been adopted by another wonderful bookstore located in Irvine called A Whale of A Tale Bookshoppe.) I was able to meet Cornelia Funke, author of Dragon Rider, the Inkheart Trilogy, Igraine the Brave, and many other great titles.
Cornelia and Me
Cornelia in her amazing dress and Alex (owner of A Whale of a Tale)
My Enthusiastic Face
At the OC Book Festival myself and Non helped out Robyn Hawk (Check out her blog Reading it All) with the YA/Teen Stage. It was a hot day but the line-up that Robyn put together was just so cool. (See how I did that–hot and cool. I’m a dork). The event started with a Tween Panel moderated by the ever so funny author of the School of Fear series, Gitty Daneshvari. It featured the following authors: Greg Taylor – Killer Pizza series, Helen Stringer – Spellbinder and Midnight Gate, Greg van Eekhout – The Boy at the End of the World, Mark Jeffrey – Max Quick series.
The Tween Panel
Me and My BFF
Gitty was a fantastic moderator and I utterly adore listening to her talk. She is just the funniest and I like to imagine we are best friends who exchange witty, self-deprecating remarks about our imagined illnesses and ridiculous fears. We laugh and then we cry and then we check our WebMD Apps.
Following the panel were authors Frank Beddor (Looking Glass Wars series), PJ Haarsma (Softwire series), Lisi Harrison (Monster High series), and the very likeable Holly Goldberg Sloan, author of I’ll Be There.
Frank Beddor and PJ Haarsma
Me and Holly Goldberg Sloan
The Teen Lit (Keeping it Real) Panel featured: Jessi Kirby – Moonglass, Kirsten Hubbard – Like Mandarin, Lindsey Leavitt – Sean Griswold’s Head, and the awesome Andrew Smith with his new novel, Stick. The portion of Stick that Andrew read made me so eager to read the entire book. He truly has an amazing narrative style.
The Teen Lit Panel
Me, Andrew Smith, and Non
The rest of the day was filled with paranormal/supernatural lit. The Paranormal Panel included: Emma Michaels – The Thirteenth Chime and Anasazi, Inara Scott – Delacroix Academy, Cindy Pon – Kingdom of Xia series, Gretchen McNeil – Possess, Jeff Mariotte – Dark Vengence. Kami Garcia, co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series, and Heather Brewer, author of the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series and now her new series The Slayer Chronicles, drew large crowds.
Kami Garcia
The Paranormal Panel
Heather Brewer
The final two authors, Nancy Holder and Amber Benson, rounded off a great day at the festival. I purchased Amber’s series, Calliope Reaper Jones, and can’t wait to start it. Amber’s writing style is so smart and funny that I know it will be awesome.
Me, Nancy Holder, Amber Benson, and Non
Amber Benson
