I’m back and pseudo-rested after four days at NCTE/ALAN, and I guess I owe you guys a recap of the highs and lows.
HIGH: meeting my fabulous new editor.
LOW: me. literally. I’m freakishly short in comparison.
HIGH: the hotel where we were all staying was tremendously nice and right on San Antonio’s Riverwalk.
LOW: The river(walk) branches! And I had no idea the river would branch. And so I spent a good deal of the first day not knowing where the convention center was in relation to…anything. Which means I totally lost all of my “I’m an excellent navigator” street cred with my fellow authors.
HIGH: Getting to see so many of my favorite author friends and making so many new ones.
LOW: Now they’ve all gone back inside my computer (or so it feels) and I won’t see them in person again in a very long time.
HIGH: LIBRARIANS AND TEACHERS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve always known this, of course, but I never think of my books as “critical acclaim” books. That’s okay. I think they’re well-written (or as well-written as I can muster) but I know the words “Printz Award for Excellence in Literature” and “Ally Carter” will never be used in the same sentence.
Unless the sentence is “Ally Carter will never win the Printz Award for Excellence in Literature”.
And that’s cool. Seriously. It is.
So that’s why I was COMPLETELY unprepared to have so many amazingly cool, kind, and KNOWLEDGEABLE librarians and teachers say so many kind things about my books.
Librarians and teachers like me?
Librarians and teachers like me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Definitely a high.
LOW: Having to meet so many cool people while my feet hurt. A lot.
HIGH: Guacamole. So much guacamole. They could rename that area to “Guacamolewalk” and I think it would be just as appropriate.
LOW: (while trying to zip my jeans) Guacamole. So much guacamole.
HIGH: Free books! So many free books!
LOW: (while packing) Where the heck am I supposed to stick all these books?
HIGH: Easily, by far the highlight of the convention was walking the floor with a super smart, savvy teen, Christine, and her mother, Jenny Moss, and learning that of all the dozens–possibly hundreds–of books and Advance Reading Copies that Christine had taken home, DON’T JUDGE A GIRL BY HER COVER had been the one Christine had read in one sitting before coming back the next day.
Best. High. Ever.
–Ally
