First, my favorite of the weekend, a night shot of the Washington monument.

And a couple more from that night, my last night in D.C.

Then more to come of actual publishing stuff. 🙂

…and Shannon Hale is hilarious.

Seriously, if you ever have the opportunity to get a book signed by her, don’t miss that chance. You’ll come away with such classics as “Tallyho! Mr. Darcy thinks you’re hot” and “For Stacy, Who found her dream job. I’m sure it was my doing. You rock.” Of course, that last one is a little more specific than most (she and I met a few years ago at a conference–when I was still a grad student and Enna Burning, her second book, had just been released–where she wrote that she hoped I found my dream job).

Her talk beforehand was hilarious–also never miss an opportunity to hear her speak–and now I have a picture of us together, which I didn’t have from back in the day at my first LTUE as a guest. 

My only disappointment: that we didn’t get too long to catch up. Shannon, we’ll have to catch up sometime!

I’m taking the day off today, now that I’m back from ALA, and so my day started much later than normal. I put a bowl of water for my oatmeal into the microwave to heat for what I thought was 2 minutes, and forgot about it. I’ll go back and reheat it, I thought, and continued with what I was doing.

I just walked into the kitchen, and the microwave was still going!

It had 7 minutes left of 20 minutes. I was baking my bowl at this point, and oh, the smell! The bowl was cracked in half, and thankfully, though it was crispy in some places, the same hadn’t happened to the glass revolving plate–though both were hot enough that they might have been in the broiler.

I guess I won’t be having oatmeal this morning. Perhaps I should go to the store and get some milk and eat cold cereal!

Here’s the real address for the podcast of me and Tiffany Trent:

http://www.timewastersguide.com/article/1559/Time-Waster\s-Radio-1-Hallowmere—-In-the-Serpent\s-Coils

We talk about the genesis of Hallowmere, Tiffany’s background in writing, her advice for beginning writers, and much more!

I have a feeling none of you were able to listen to the podcast because I gave you a link to the forums rather than the page with the podcast! And now that I’ve realized my mistake, apparently the page doesn’t seem to be there anymore. It’s probably just a random fluke, because it was there earlier when I looked at it. At any rate, I’ll post that updated address as soon as I confirm that it’s there again.

Thursday, June 28
7:00 pm
University Bookstore
Seattle, WA 

Tomorrow night Shannon Hale, she of the Princess Academy and Goose Girl and most recently, Austenland fame, will be signing very near my neighborhood at the University Bookstore in the U District. If you’re local to Seattle, be sure to drop in and get a book signed. I will be bringing along at least two friends who are Shannon Hale fans as well. See you there!

While at ALA, Tiffany Trent

tltrent

) and I were interviewed for the inauguration of a podcast series over at The Official Time-waster’s Guide, a game/book/movie review site that really loves things of a fantastic nature. That interview is now up. If you like what you hear, you can go discuss it on their forums. The folks at TWG also interviewed Candice Ransom on another day, which will go up as the second of the series, I believe–though there may be another episode between then that will have other content. I’ll keep you updated.

Today was the busiest day of the conference for us at Mirrorstone, though the initial crush of weekend attendees has slowed a bit (we’ve been told that this conference’s attendance broke the record set in Chicago two years ago through the roof, as the highest attendance ever at an ALA convention). 

Highlights of my day (pictures to come later):

Seeing the line crook around the corner for Tiffany Trent’s ARC signing in the Random House booth (they’re our distributor, and I must say they’re all fabulous people). 

Seeing Cecil Castellucci reading at the Live @ Your Library stage and recruiting several librarian attendees to be the Janes in her new graphic novel P.L.A.I.N. Janes. Very inventive way to make a visual medium translate as much visually as auditorily (is that a word?).

Seeing Tiffany Trent read at the Live @ Your Library stage, the first time I’ve heard Hallowmere read aloud. And more librarians excited for Hallowmere.

Seeing and/or meeting several LJ/blog friends who I only see at these kinds of conventions including Alvina, Sarah, Holly, Cecil, dlgarfinkle, and many many others which now that it’s after midnight after several days on my feet, I’m remembering you but not. I will make amends at a time when I am thinking clearer and have time to go through my pictures.

Speaking of, pictures later. I was going to try to post them, but exhaustion has finally hit and I just need to go to bed if I’m going to make it to what should be my highlight of tomorrow: my tour of the Capitol! (First time to D.C., big history buff. Hey, I’m the kind of girl who will travel to Scotland to do family history. This is a really exciting thing for me.)

This post is entirely for my friend

mistborn

.

I’m at ALA today, standing in our booth. It was during Candice Ransom’s signing of her chapter book series Time Spies, and who do I see walking through our booth?

I leave it to Brandon to answer that with a shout.

p.s. Real recap of the show, including pictures, to come. But I’ve had some late nights and early mornings, so it’s not happening tonight. Quick summary: it’s really great! As usual, our booth is comfy and inviting, and people are liking our books. We’ve had some great chats with so many peopl
e. Tomorrow morning Candice and Tiffany Trent (

tltrent

) will be at a breakfast, and then Tiffany is signing at the Random House booth and in the afternoon she’s reading at the Live at Your Library stage in the afternoon. Tomorrow will be a very busy day.

If you’re going to be at ALA Annual Conference in D.C. this weekend, check out all that we have going on! (And stop by the booth to say hi even if not at these times. If you’re looking for me specifically, I may or may not always be there, so leave a comment here to coordinate times.)

I leave tomorrow about noonish my time, so after that I’m pretty much going dark (not that this LJ hasn’t been kind of dark already the last couple weeks–sorry about that. It’s been a busy month; hopefully I’ll get back to posting more regularly come next month!).

Note that the books/ARCs these authors will be signing will be FREE in limited quantities. Get there first!

Alvina, a Blue Rose Girl and editor at Little, Brown, is conducting a poll on her submission guidelines. Pop over and chime in–she’s still looking for comments.