Big Hearted Fun at NCTE

Burnin' love comes once in a lifetime

The NCTE convention was probably the most fun I've had at a promotional event this year, and not just because of the lack of anyone accusing me of corrupting the youth of America. I got to meet teachers and librarians from all over the place, including some who post on this blog (hi Sandi!), and San Antonio is just a very cool place.

I also was fortunate enough to meet dozens of the best authors writing YA fiction today, people who I've admired from a distance for years. I won't do a who's who for fear of leaving anyone out, but suffice to say I was pretty starstruck and probably babbled incoherently (or even more incoherently than usual) around many of the folks I met. I will, however, mention that I got to hang out with the fabulous E. Lockhart, who I was fortunate enough to begin my promo travel circuit with. E.'s book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was a well-deserved National Book Award nominee, as though you needed another reason to go read it. If you haven't, what are you waiting for?

And speaking of babbling incoherently, the folks at Hyperion shot some promotional footage of me, no doubt to capitalize on my radio-star good looks. Talk about a bizarre experience! For some reason I am pretty comfortable speaking in front of a group like I did at the panel I was on, and reasonably engaging one on one or in small groups, but I found hitting the grapefruits that Hyperion was serving me up during the "video interview" almost impossible to hit. At one point, when bungling yet another chance to describe Kiss of Life, I was asked "You did write the book, didn't you?" Yarg. Hopefully the Disney special effects team will take the footage and I'll come across as endearing as Wall-E. In fact, maybe they should just use footage of Wall-E with my voice over. Except my voice is probably pretty irritating so they should re-dub my answers in Wall-E's voice. Did I mention they played Wall-E on the airplane home? I love that movie.

Good times, good times. And I got home in plenty of time to act as my wife's sous-chef for Thanksgiving.