Sunday, July 18, 2010

My day with R. J. Anderson, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Karen Healey against a backdrop of Harry Potter fans!

I would title this "Infinitus 2010" except I spent virtually no time at the convention, except at my friends' panel. In fact, my most interaction was shelling out $50 to basically not attend. However, nothing against the convention, which seemed like a very lively event with tons going on and most excellent people-watching. I have never seen so many capes, a pleasure to my eyes. I like capes. I myself wore the green dress I obtained in NYC with a peach-colored capelet, black and white striped socks, and green men's 70's shoes which have an 18th century cut to them, heel and all. Well, if I was a witch, that's what I would wear.

I met Rebecca (R.J.), Sarah and Karen up in their hotel room. I must confess that for several minutes I had Sarah and Karen mixed up. I have no idea why because I've seen numerous pictures of Sarah and she looks exactly like said pictures. I think I was thrown by the fact that she didn't have an obvious Irish accent, but then, Karen's accent doesn't sound remotely Irish either, so none of this makes any sense. I blame it on the fact that I only got 3 hours of sleep, and luckily I didn't tell Karen I loved The Demon's Lexicon or anything.

(I will also note, I have twice before thought one writer was actually another writer, and in those cases I didn't realize until I got home. Even more luckily, this mistake has never been revealed. Unless I reveal it on my blog, like now, for your amusement.)

We talked for a bit, and then we had a panel to go to--me to watch the panel, the other three to be on it. The location of the panel had been moved, last minute, and we were led to a small hallway...for a moment I thought perhaps the panel would be held in a restroom, but it turned out to be more like a storage room for extra chairs and tables.

I don't really like to watch other writers be on panels because I WANT TO TALK, but it was a great panel. All three had very entertaining or interesting stories about how they get their ideas, and all three read excellent excerpts from their books, and all were good readers. I've seen some very bad readings, and I am always relieved to see good ones so I don't have to fight to nod off! The audience of ten or so people asked wonderful questions. Then we adjourned to the dealer room to sign, only the signing table was overwhelmed by some other event going on, so it never really happened as planned. I did sign the stock at the Books-A-Million booth and I heard some were sold. I thank you, whoever you are!!

We ate a hilariously small lunch at one of the hotel restaurants. My $5 miso soup had literally ten noodles in it, and about a teaspoon each of tofu and seaweed, with possibly half a cup of broth. Ohhh, Universal Studios.

Sarah, being from Ireland, wanted to get some Florida sunshine, so we went poolside to read. I was wearing the green dress, which I'm beginning to think is cursed, because I wore it on the hellishly hot day of BEA, and now was stuck sweating in it again. I might live in Florida but I'm not at ALL fond of the weather from May to October. Everyone else was reading but I really couldn't focus in the heat. After a little while, Rebecca also lost her tolerance for Florida in July and we went up to the hotel room and had a wonderful conversation about all those deep writerly topics--themes and representation and world-building and blah blah. Heaven!

Sarah wanted to go to the Books-A-Million rumored to be three blocks away, but it turned out to be closed. Forever. But Dade is always up for a bookstore trip and he needed to pick me up anyway, so I called him and procured us a ride to the Barnes & Noble. He's almost an hour away, so we had dinner first at the hotel, where we had more lovely writerly conversation. At one point, costumed Simpsons characters wandered over to our table and loomed over us. Sarah and I waved at them, but they didn't go away. They just STOOD THERE. Homer put his hand on Rebecca's back. All three of us waved, and finally they shuffled off. It was extremely creepy. Let me say it again: Ohhh, Universal Studios.

All in all, despite some ridiculous expenditures on Universal property, it was a lovely day with three wonderful writers, and a great reward for turning Between the Sea and Sky in to my editor on Friday, YAAY!

7 comments:

  1. HOMER HAUNTS MY DREAMS.

    And not in the good way, either. If there is any possible way that Homer Simpson haunting one's dreams could be good, that is...

    It was such a pleasure to meet you! I enjoyed our conversation very much as well! Thanks for this great recap of the day.

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  2. Sounds lovely & enviable...except for the Simpson-looming, which sounds icky. Oh, to have lovely author conversations! *wink wink*

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  3. Homer was terrifying, guys. Poor R. J. definitely got the worst of it. Sitting in the booth half of that table was my best decision of the day because he couldn't get at us there... @_@

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  4. Sounds like you ladies had a wonderful time together! Sorry you had to endure the eerie lurking of a few gigantic animated characters. Congratulations on turning in Between the Sea and Sky on Friday! :)

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  5. oh god, THE SIMPSONS WERE SO CREEPY AND OVERLY LARGE. They came up to the H/D shippers as we were having dinner and we were like ..... at them. Thankfully they didn't loom too long, but still.

    It was so good to meet you! I had at least one friend ask to look at my copy of the book, and she was hooked by the first line alone, so you've pre-emptively sold at least one more from the convention. :D

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  6. bookshop: haha...seriously, why does Universal think that hiring Simpsons characters that get up in your personal space is a good idea?

    Oh yay, thanks for the extra pre-emptive sale! =D

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