Breathless Reads & Dog-Sitters

I had a very busy weekend with a lot of fun things, which was good after the difficult time our family went through the weekend before. It started off on Friday when I went to speak to sixth and seventh graders at Greene County Middle School in Snow Hill, NC. I had a lot of fun spending the day at the school and talking with the students about writing and being a writer. We stopped by the media center to meet the school librarian and while I was in there signing the copies of Troy High that the school had, some kids from the class I had just spoken to came in wanting to check out my books and were excited to read them. They had great questions and it’s always so much fun to speak at schools. The most asked questions are always “How much money do writers make?” and “Are you going to make a movie of your books?” Which then goes along with, “If you do make a movie, are you going to be in it?” To which I always reply, “No way!” I’ll stick to writing and let the actors do the acting. 😉

Then that night The Husband and I drove to Raleigh for the last stop in the Breathless Reads tour. It’s about an hour and a half to two hour drive, but I couldn’t pass up seeing five YA authors in one place. I got to meet Ally Condie (Matched), Andrea Cremer (Nightshade), Kirsten Miller (The Eternal Ones), Beth Revis (Across the Universe), and Brenna Yovanoff (The Replacement). The place was packed with all the chairs filled and then people standing around in the back. The line for the signing stretched all through the store. I ended up chatting with the person standing behind me in line, which turned out to be Loni from A Casual Reader. It was a great time and I’m really glad I made it there. I LOVE listening to other writers talk about writing and their process. And now I know that Andrea Cremer loves kissing scenes and Beth Revis loves blowing things up (um, in her books. Not in real life. I don’t think). Also, Beth and I have a similar writing process: We sit down, start writing one line at a time from start to finish without any idea of what’s going to happen and figure out the story along the way. And Kirsten Miller told everyone about “butt power.” She had the audience laughing a lot.

All five authors speaking about their characters.

I got a special copy of The Eternal Ones. Kirsten Miller accidentally tore the page while she was signing, so she added an apology next to her signature that says “<–Sorry for the rip!” I told her it was okay, I’d just tell everyone I had a “personally torn by the author” copy. 😉

I also got to meet James, aka BookChic, at the signing. We’ve chatted a few times online ever since Something to Blog About came out, but this was first chance we’d had to meet. I wish we could have chatted longer, but it was getting late and it had been a very long day for me so I was ready to get home.

The rest of the weekend was a lot less busy compared to Friday. We’re dog-sitting my father-in-law’s dog, a Shih Tzu named Zoey. So on Sunday we took Zoey and our dog Chloe walking at a local state park. (We didn’t take Daisy because she’s old and can’t walk as well, so she wouldn’t have been able to handle the hills and long walk on the trail.) They certainly got a lot of attention from kids and some adults too. Chloe gets too hyper and a bit nervous around other people, but Zoey loved getting her head rubbed by everyone.

Zoey just loves any attention she can get! (And she refuses to stay still for a picture.)