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Author Fantasy

Many people think that the life of the author must be incredibly glamorous, filled with cheering crowds of adoring fans, travel by limo, and being heralded by marching bands.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that the reality is very far removed from that fantasy.

Except for yesterday.

The Teen Book Festival in Rochester is the top teen book fest in the country. Maybe the world. Thousands of teens came to listen to a couple dozen YA authors. We were all blown away by the magnitude and wonderful atmosphere of the event.

  It’s always good to start an event with a cool cake. We had a dinner on Friday night at the Strong National Museum of Play so we could meet each other and hang out with some of the incredible librarians whose volunteer efforts pull TBF together.

I FINALLY got to meet Barry Lyga, who is much nicer than he wants to admit. You can see him TODAY at river’s end bookstore in Oswego, NY at 2 pm.

And I met Lisa McMann, which I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

They really did drive us to the event in two limos.

  Here’s an interior shot of the limo I rode it. You can see Matt de la Peña toward the back on the left, Alyson Noel on the far right, and just to the left of Alyson, Holly Black.

And when we got to the Nazareth campus, Ellen Hopkins and Terry Trueman were transferred to a motorcycle & sidecar. At the front of the procession? An honest-to-goodness marching band.

That was when I knew the day was going to be a waking fantasy.

  Then I saw the giant posters of all the authors on the walls and began to doubt the "waking" part of that previous sentence. It felt like a fever dream.

We all spoke on a "lightning round" panel in the gym, then broke off to give workshops to smaller audiences. Thank you everyone who took the time to hang our at my presentations!

At the end of the day we met back in the gym to sign books. And sign books. And sign books. For hours. It was heavenly.

Again – THANK YOU to everyone who stood in the very long lines!

ESPECIALLY….

The mom and daughter who traveled from Long Island for the event AND

the mom and daughter (I think her name is Mackenzie) who traveled all the way from Massachusetts (Worcester, maybe?) for the event. I see a new trend: mother-daughter book festival road trips!!!

Now I head back to the Forest where there is no marching band, but there is a handsome husband, overzealous dog, baby chickens and a garden that needs some attention.

Thank you very, very much Teen Book Festival. Amazing experience.

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Rochester-bound & chicken moment of zen

(Zen can be found at the bottom of this post.)

A couple of people have written to ask how our dog, the Creature With Fangs, is taken the arrival of the baby chickens. (The CWF is a large, neurotic German Shepherd.)

We have not made the necessary introductions yet. There is a very good chance we never will. Some dogs take well to having chickens around. Other view them as a combination toy/snack.

And then there is the tennis ball problem. The CWF loves to chase after tennis balls, grab them in her mouth, and gnaw on them.

I am not sure the CWF would see much of a difference between a tennis ball and a five-day-old chicken. We are not going to test those waters quite yet.

Garden update: we’re still have frost in the morning, so I dare not transplant the veggies that like it hot. But they’ve all outgrown the little containers (also known as old egg cartons) that I started them in. So this morning I transplanted them to bigger pots of dirt. Another week or two and I hope they can go outside. Maybe I’ll just stick them out there sooner, and dress them in a jacket and scarf.

In between gardening, chicken-sitting and fussing over the compost heap…. oh, and writing; I do that, too, I am packing for this weekend’s trip to the ab-fab Rochester Teen Book Festival. You should join us!!!! It is the best, rockingingest YA book event east of the Mississippi River and it is FREE!!!!!

I’ll be there giving presentations, hanging out, signing sneakers, and laughing too loudly along with Holly Black, Coe Booth, Robin Brande, manga writing duo Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges, Marissa Doyle, Simone Elkeles, Ellen Hopkins, James Kennedy, A.S. King, Daniel Kirk, Alisa Libby, Barry Lyga, Mari Mancusi, Lisa McMann, Ben Mikaelsen, Alyson Noël, Sarah Ockler, Matt de la Peña, Amy Kathleen Ryan, Lisa Schroeder, Jennifer E. Smith, Terry Trueman, Vivian Vande Velde, and Martin Wilson.

Can you freaking believe that line-up?

You know you want to join us. Come on, it’s Saturday. You don’t have baby chickens to take care of. Come hang out with us!!

My chickens said I should post the following picture for those of you who are feeling a bit stressed. They meditate quite a bit, my chickens, and I think it is the secret to their happiness.

Moment of zen.

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Today’s chick pic

I am not going to turn into one of those people who posts pictures of cute animals and anthropomorphizes every shake of a beak or flap of a winglet or blink of a beady eye.

I hope.

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Chicken Day!!

I’ve been talking about adding chickens (and goats and pigs and turkeys and ducks and heaven knows what else) to our Forest for a while. BH got jazzed about the challenge of building a safe chicken coop out of scrap lumber and I have been lusting after eggs, and

WARNING!! VEGETARIANS SKIP THE NEXT GRAF!

chicken that I can eat without being afraid of what the critter was fed, or how terribly it was treated during its life.

I stopped talking and took bold action a few weeks ago and ordered 15 Buff Orpington chicks. The post office called this morning; the girls had arrived and were peeping loudly.

So we drove down to pick them up.

This is what they looked like when we opened the box.

Task #1: show them to the watering hole.

They learned the water lesson very well.

  Task #2: eating. They are good at this, too! This is when I counted and found we had been shipped 16 instead of 15 chicks. It is very likely that a few will die of natural causes in the next few weeks, I am told, so the spare will come in handy.

  All that drinking and eating, not to mention the arduous trip courtesy of the US Postal Service, made them tired. Task #3: naptime.

Chicks falling asleep on their feet might just be the cutest thing ever.

Stay tuned for more chicken adventures!

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Yep, I’m still here!!

No, I have not dropped off the face of the planet. I’ve just been a bit busy.

BUT!

You can see me ALL DAY at the Teen Book Festival in Rochester, NY this Saturday.

OR you can read my Book Brahmin interview at Shelf Awareness, in which I answer questions about books.

OR (blushing about this one) you can read this very nice, short piece written about me from the director of the Kalamazoo Public Library.

And if you give me a couple of minutes, I’ll show you what Mother’s Day looked like in the Forest yesterday.

AND you can enjoy this picture of what Mother’s Day looked like in the Forest yesterday.

Truth in advertising: this is a picture from my camp, where we spent the day. It’s about 40 minutes away (and 1000 feet higher) than my house. We did get snow at home, too, for about an hour, but the rain washed it all away.