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This happens very soon, like today. Come if you can! It's kind of amazing.

Today at 1pm, teen author panel at NYPL on 42nd with Kim Harrington, Maggie Stiefvater, Robin Wasserman, and moderator David Levithan. More panels/authors all afternoon!

Tomorrow at 1pm, Books of Wonder signing on 18th Street, along with 40-some other teen authors. FUN.

Both events are open to tweens and up and are free.

All the details here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?gid=56488781586&v=info

In case you've missed it, which I hope you haven't, the Second Annual Teen Author Festival, organized by the amazing, hilarious and possibly superhuman David Levithan, has been running this week. There were so many great events, and I was honored to be part of a few of them.

On Thursday morning, Coe Booth, Maryrose Wood, Neesha Meminger and I went to the Bronx Library Center as part of the Five Borough Read. I was a little worried when I saw the sign:



because when you get four YA authors together you can lay odds than one of them is going to do a reading with cursing in it. (I'm looking at myself and Coe Booth). I did ask the librarian if it was okay to use the "beeyotch" word in my reading before the kids got there, forgetting that I actually had the "s" word too. She just laughed and said, "I'm sure they've heard it before."

As Neesha pointed out in her blog post about our visit "These young men and women were hungry for what is REAL. What they know in their bones."




They were the such a terrific crowd, and they asked amazing questions. One of my favorites was "Do you enjoy research most or actually writing the book?" This was after Maryrose described visiting the castle used as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films as the guest of the Duchess of Northumberland as research for an upcoming book.

Maryrose, dontcha know, is seriously high tech. I read an excerpt from my JULY 2011 internet predator novel, WANT TO GO PRIVATE? and was kicking it old school, reading from printed pages of my manuscript. Maryrose, however, is cutting edge:



She was reading from her KINDLE. Way of the future, or, as Maryrose says, "because my printer broke."
Either way, it looked very 21st Century.



An interesting aside totally unrelated to libraries. It was alternate side of the street parking day so it was really hard to find a place to dump my car. I finally ended up parking on Webster Avenue, several blocks away from the library. I had to call my mom and tell her because when my Grandfather Harry Darer emigrated to the US from the Ukraine in early 20thC, he came through Bucharest, and we have the copy of the forms he filled out at the US Embassy there. He was going to be staying with relative who was living on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, but obviously told this with a heavy accent, so on the form it says "Vebster Avenue, Bronx, NY". It's always been a big joke in our family. So I called Mom and said, "Guess where I parked my car? On VEBSTER AVENUE!!"

Thank you to the Teen Librarian at Bronx Library Center for organizing such a wonderful event!

On Friday we had an internal reading of Scholastic authors in the morning. I got to meet ALICE HOFFMAN! MAGGIE STIEFVATE

NYC Teen Author Festival--My First Day...

I arrived in New York on rainy Thursday to catch the last few days of the Teen Author Festival. That afternoon I met my friend Aaron Hartzler (who is the Director, Communications & Design for SCBWI) for a 4 o'clock reading at the 67th branch library featuring Rachel Vail, Courtney Sheinmel, Martin Wilson, Lisa Ann Sandell, and Cecily Von Ziegesar (pictured below in my rather dark photo, L to R, holding up their books).


Oh...I really adore listening to authors reading their own work. There's something sort of magical about it. I'd love to have a continuous bedtime rotation of YA authors reading me a few chapters every night before I fall asleep. Courtney Sheinmel told us she got the idea for her book My So-Called Family, featuring a girl whose father was a sperm donor, from a "The Today Show" story. Cecily Von Ziegesar read a scene from an early Gossip Girl title showing us the book version of why Blair Waldorf didn't get into Harvard (no cocktail parties or text messages involved). Rachel Vail's reading from her upcoming book Lucky offered humor and a great character. Lisa Ann Sandell's writing was lyrical and beautiful and I wasn't surprised to hear that her book A Map of the Known World is her first first prose work, her previous books written in verse. As for Llambda Literary Awards finalist Martin Wilson--after the reading teens were fighting over who got to read his book What They Always Tell Us first as he gave his copy to the library.

And that was another wonderful thing about this reading: teens. There were a bunch of them. And they (pretty much all) paid attention and they asked thoughtful questions and they seemed to have a relationship with the YA librarian which was wonderful to see.

After the reading we were off to Books of Wonder for the debut of Tiger Beat, the first-ever all-YA-author band including Libba Bray, Daniel Ehrenhaft, Barney Miller, and Natalie Standiford. Tiger Beat's opening act was David Levithan and Rachel Cohn (rockin a flannel shirt and eye liner) offering readings from their book Naomi and Eli's No Kiss List (in both English and German!) and a reenacted scene from the movie version of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist.


Then Tiger Beat seriously rocked (they were, like, good) and everyone cheered.


And waved foam Tiger Beat rock'n'roll hands.


Oh--and attached to Books of Wonder: a cupcake place! Aren't they pretty. (The chocolate icing was fantastic.)


Last, here's a reenactment of part of Aaron's conversation with the girl who sold us cupcakes. (I forget her name. I will call her Kara.)

Aaron: Hi Kara. Are you excited about the authors here in the store?

Kara: Oh. I'm not really into young adult books.

Pause.

I'm sixteen.

Aaron: What do you read?

Kara: Neil Gaiman.

Last week was the First Ever NY Teen Author Festival organized by Uber Editor and Author David Levithan and the amazing teen librarians at the New York Public Library. Unfortunately, due to my suburban mom-hood, I wasn't able to enjoy as many of the festivities as I would have liked (namely, all of them) but here's a few highlights from the ones I did get to.

Friday I headed to Big Red Dog HQ for an in-house reading by authors on the Scholastic Spring and Summer lists. It really exciting to hear everyone else read (especially once my reading was over and I could relax!) and afterwards we got to enjoy vodka pizza and schmooze and then squeeze into David's office to sign books. My "To Read" pile has grown considerably.



L to R: Blake Nelson, Eliot Schrefer, Siobhan Vivian, Matthue Roth, Moi, Natalie Standiford, Coe Booth

On Sunday I bundled Daughter and her friend into the car and started out for the New York Public Library, except I noticed that one of those car lights with the exclamation points was on. You know, the ones that when you look them up in the book to see what they mean say "DO NOT DRIVE WHEN THIS IS ON OR YOU WILL DIE" kind of lights. We were already a little late and I was freaking out, but it basically turned out that the tire pressure was low. Got it filled up, and made it there panting and wheezing for our panel. Blake Nelson gave a hilarious reading of his forthcoming book DESTROY ALL CARS, which I highly recommend, having read an ARC. The MC reminds me of my high school friends.

Then it was time for the First Ever YA Improv Short Story, organized by Barry Lyga. Audience members wrote down titles, characters and situations on scraps of paper and they were put in a box. We, the authors, had to pick a piece of paper out of the box and incorporate it into the story for 30 seconds...and so on.

The initial set up was Princess Papaya as the character, Schechezuan Panda as the setting and "Under the Knife" as the title. From there, it went to Facelifted Zombies who looked like Bianca Jagger, Transsexual, transgendered skinny dipping, the prom, AA, the shortest guy in the class - you name it, we went there. It was hilarious. And it's been videotaped. I'm told it will be on You Tube sometime in the near future.



L to R:
Barry Lyga, Marie Rutkoski, Moi, Coe Booth, Bill Konigsberg, Martin Wilson, Lizabeth Zindel, Blake Nelson

The event was in the Trustees Room at the NYPL. Isn't it gorgeous?

After ensuring we weren't being chased by any face-lifted zombies (or Joan Rivers), we headed down to Union Square for lunch with Adrienne Marie Vrettos, Coe Booth and Megan McCafferty:



before hitting the BIGGEST YA SIGNING OF ALL TIME event at Books of Wonder.

Now, here's a question: If you're at all insecure as an author, who is the person you do NOT want to be sitting near at a group signing?



A: Cecily von Zeigesar, that's who!

As the line for C v Z stretched around three city blocks, we other mere mortals sat doodling with our Sharpies and pondering life.

But I did sign a book. See!



Even if I didn't have a mile long line, it was a great change to meet teens and connect with other authors. And all it took was the one person who came up to me and said she'd read PURGE and really connected with it because she'd been through something similar to really make my day.

I've been busy in my lair trying to get my publicity ducks in a row for the upcoming publication of PURGE. This week - sending out invitations for the launch party on April 22nd at my local independent bookstore Just Books. I've also been battling with possibly the most inscrutable program known to man (or woman), Photoshop, trying to design my bookmarks so I can get them to the online print place in time for the launch.

The other thing I'm doing is a website revamp. What kinds of things do you like to see on author sites?
What things make them interesting and fun? My site has been pretty static for a while because I've had problems with my web host (they kept getting taken over and then I'd have problems uploading changes) but now that problem should be resolved by switching hosts, so I'm hoping to liven things up a bit!

Best of all, this week is the first annual New York Teen Author Festival. I'll be taking part in the festivities on Sunday, and I'm really looking forward to seeing fellow YA authors and hanging out with teens.

I'll Be in NYC for the Teen Author Festival Tomorrow...

And all weekend. So:

• I may or may not be blogging throughout the weekend, but I will definitely post about the NYC Teen Author Festival events I attended when I'm back at work next Tuesday.
• I will be doing much much tweeting, so if you follow me on Twitter, look for my posts.
• If you're there, find me and say hi. (You know what I look like because you see my picture whenever you visit my blog. Just remember the me-not-really-being-blue thing.)
  

Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive
March 21-22...

In just a few weeks we have a great event coming up at the Writer's Digest HQ here in the Nati--a Writer's Digest Editors' Intensive.

Late last year when we came up with the idea to do an event for writers here in our offices, I admit I was a little worried. Don't get me wrong--I thought it was an excellent idea. (We've got an amazing amount of writing and publishing knowledge in our collective WD brain and we're all about sharing it with writers.) But we didn't have a lot of time to promote it and we were asking people to come to Cincinnati in winter two weeks before Christmas. (I didn't really want to be in Cincinnati in the winter two weeks before Christmas.)

I was so excited when the event quickly sold out (people came from all over!) and even more excited to feel the energy in the room the first day of our event. The writers who attended asked great questions and gave us such positive feedback. I really felt like we were giving them what they needed and helping them. And it was limited to just over 50 attendees, so our event really had a more intimate feel than many others.

Because the response to our first event was to tremendous, we've schedule four more Editors Intensives for 2009, the first on March 21-22. Besides a full day of presentations and Q&A (on topics like revision, networking, and pitching), attendees get a 30-minute one-on-one critique of the first 50 pages of a manuscript, a free sub to WritersMarket.com, and a CD featuring Writer's Digest interviews. And (since our December attendees told us they would have liked more time to hang out with us and each other) there will also be informal Saturday night mingling.

You can click here to get all the information on our Editors' Intensive. (It's cheaper if you register by next Wednesday.) Note that although I'm on the list of editors presenting, I actually will not be--I couldn't pass up the chance to attend the NYC Teen Author Festival (which you will certainly be hearing about on my blog and my Twitter account.) I'll be presenting at the June and the October Intensives. Rest assured, however, that my co-workers handling the March event are awesome.