event: Teen Book Fest at the Provo City Library

A couple weeks ago the Provo City Library held their first annual Teen Book Fest. I switched around my schedule at work so that I'd be able to go. It was a lot of fun. Some highlights:

• In the signing line for Scott Westerfeld I noticed his wife, Justine Larbalestier, standing nearby. I had my copy of Zombies vs Unicorns and I was going to have her sign it when I got closer to the front since she was one of the editors. Well, she actually came up to me and asked if I wanted her to sign it. We chatted for 60 seconds. At the time I was listening to How to Ditch Your Fairy and told her how much I was enjoying it. She said that the audio of Zombies vs Unicorns is really fun because she and Holly Black were in the studio doing the introductions for the stories and they went off script in their arguing so there's stuff on the audio that isn't in the book. So now I need to check out the audio and listen to it, or at least the story intros. Justine Larbalestier is super nice. By the time I got to the front she'd left, so I was really happy she came to talk to me. It kind of made my day.
• I saw Shannon Hale pass by with her two little twins. Okay, not necessarily a highlight, but kind of fun. I promise, I'm not a stalker.
• I met Enna Isilee of squeaky book fame, though only for about 45 seconds. Hi Enna!
• I went to two readings, the first was Wendy Toliver. I was rather sad that more people didn't attend the readings because they were a lot of fun. Wendy Toliver's new book, Lifted, sounds interesting. Not normally a book I'd read, especially because I'm not a fan of the cover. Yes, I always judge a book by what it looks like--helps me weed my TBR list. Anyway, I have now checked it out from the library, so expect a review sometime soon. Or later, with nanowrimo it might take a while to read.
• The other reading I went to was Ann Cannon's. Seriously, she's hilarious. You should check out her books and her blog. She had a book called, The Romance Writer's Phrase Book and we all took turns closing our eyes and pointing to a sentence that she then read out loud. It was pretty great. (she even wrote a blog post about the book HERE). Why did she do this at the reading? Because at one time she was a closet romance reader. So in her YA book, The Losers' Guide to Life and Love, she had one of her characters be a closet romance reader. 

It was a fun day. I wasn't able to go to Scott Westerfeld's keynote speech, though I heard it was spectacular. And fun. It'll be archived later this week, so maybe I'll take an hour to watch it this weekend. HEREs a link to the page if you want to take a look at it yourselves.

Sigh. I forgot my camera. So no pictures. I'll have to remember next time, gosh darn it!