July 31 - YA Author Event

When I first heard about this huge YA author signing with 6 authors (I know, that's a lot of YA lit awesome in one space), I knew it was something I'd be interested in going to. Even if it meant another 3 and a half hour drive across the border. But I wanted to go, and so I turned it into a weekend away mini vacation kind of thing. And totally added to the Canadian content that Eileen Cook brought with her (Mandy Hubbard, Cat Patrick, and Kimberly Derting live in Washington, and Lisa Schroeder and Suzanne Young live down in Oregon). It seemed to be a pretty good mix of authors from the vague and large Pacific Northwest area.

Here are the awesome authors that showed up to sign books. :)

And this is the best picture out of all the ones I took. *sigh* If only we'd sat closer. Good thing Mindi Scott and I asked them about getting a big group photo once they were done signing all the books. I thought it was pretty cool that Suzanne Young's book A Need So Beautiful is all bright and shiny while the photo is a little dark. How mysterious. ;)

All the authors talked a bit about their books and shared where they found the inspiration for them. I like Cat Patrick's inspiration for Forgotten, how she'd gone down into the kitchen when her twins were younger, was doing something in the kitchen, and totally forgot what she was doing. Then she started thinking about amnesia and how it would impact a teenager.

Every author brought up the fact that their book has kissing in it. There were some giggles circling the crowd, but no one was surprised that there was kissing. It got me thinking, though. There are a lot of YA books out there, published and unpublished and circling our brains currently unwritten, that have kissing in them. Some kissing, a lot of kissing. It's there. It's part of that teenage block of life, no matter who you are, wanting to kiss someone because they're cute or you really want to or your friend told you they think you're cute. You can kiss your way through high school or only dream about it, but it's still there along with crushes and boyfriends and girlfriends and heartbreak and disappointment.

In the end, everyone was happy to sit and listen and stand in line to get their books signed. I think I was one of those rare people that had a book for everyone to sign. While it did mean I had to drive a fair distance, it was still a fun event to go to.

If only I knew what to read first. ;)

Oh, and thanks to everyone who let me semi-crash the huge dinner that all the authors plus some others and some friends went to afterwards. I didn't plan on joining, but Mindi sort of asked if I was going to come so I did and spent most of it listening to Mandy Hubbard, Mindi, and Gennifer Albin (who I was surprised to meet but figured out who she was when she brought up her book Crewel which sounds awesome). :)