Voracious YAppetite

Anyone who has visited this blog in the past few days or follows me on Twitter knows that I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday and Sunday. (WOOT WOOT!!!)

It was my first time at an author event (unless you count the San Diego ComicCon, which I used to attend rather religiously), and my first time getting books signed. *cue sighs of contentment*

The weather gods blessed all of us Festival goers with sunny and temperate weather, and besides a bright red triangle spanning the bridge of my nose, I came away from the Festival feeling so much the better for it. I already can’t wait to go again next year!

The only panels I attended this year were YA — and this was the first year that the LATFOB had YA panels! Just another indication of YA’s growing popularity and significance in literature! Of course, I’ve gotta give ya’ll a recap of what went down during the event, and although my initial reaction was just to bleed all over this post with a bunch of exclamatory babble, I figured I might as well organize my thoughts into a somewhat cohesive list. So here’s what I learned from attending the LATFOB:

1. If Meg Cabot didn’t make it as an author, she could’ve become a stand-up comedian. From the moment she began her panel presentation at 10:30am on the first day of the Festival, Meg was cracking jokes and keeping the audience entertained. The room we were in was PACKED, and everyone was busting a gut. From her PowerPoint presentation to her one-on-one chat with Cecil Castellucci to her Q&A with the audience, Meg sure knows how to create a rollicking good time.

A couple points of interest that Meg mentioned during the panel:

• Meg’s next YA book is a paranormal romance retelling of the Persephone myth, called Abandon.
• Avalon High will air as a movie on Disney Channel in the fall.
• Nerd alert! Before becoming an author, Meg wrote Star Wars and Jane Eyre fan fic.
• There may be more Princess Diaries books in the future, as interest in a continuation of the series is high. If so, it will probably follow Mia in college, but Meg has to come up with a suitable conflict first.
• Meg is also considering writing more correspondence fiction.
• Who is Precious? She’s Meg’s bag, a large black plastic tote with silver chains. Meg ADORES this purse, peeps. It’s her pprrrreeeccciiioooooossssssss. (That was my lame attempt at a Lord of the Rings reference, in case you didn’t get it.)

2. Meg Cabot is more popular than Trisha Yearwood. In terms of being an author, anyway. Meg’s line was actually the longest line I saw in the West signing area, which featured YA and cookbook author signings. Trisha, who was there in support of her recent cookbook title, Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood: Stories and Recipes to Share with Family and Friends, had a respectable line of about 30 people. Meg, however, had a line that practically wrapped around the entire signing area.

It felt good to see that although celebrities can enter practically any realm they choose just by their name alone (clothing, perfume, books, etc.), the fans of full-time authors like Meg came out and REPRESENTED.

3. Cecil Castellucci may actually be a pixie in disguise. Cecil was the moderator for several of the YA panels, and I was taken off guard at how adorable and tiny she is! I’ve been meaning to read her books, but after seeing her in action, I came home yesterday and put Boy Proof on hold at my library. Can’t wait to read it!

“I take a bath and eat bon bons.” — Cecil on dealing with writer’s block.

4. Vampires are still at the top of the YA food chain. I love keeping up with trends in YA. What’s hot right now? What’s showing promise? What’s dying down? For those of you sick of vampires…suck it up. (He he.) I’m not a die-hard vamp fan, but I’ve read my share of YA vamp books, and by the sheer size of the YA vamp fanbase that attended the LATFOB, they ain’t goin anywhere soon. The “Blood, Fangs, and Temptation: Everything Vampire” panel featuring Heather Brewer (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod), Rachel Caine (The Morganville Vampires), Melissa de la Cruz (Blue Bloods), and Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy), was by far the most popular YA panel at the LATFOB. Every seat was filled and the entire grass area surrounding the stage was also filled with people.

For all you vamp fans reading this post:

• Sydney will be featured in the Vampire Academy spin off.
• There will be a Vladimir Tod spin off.
• Richelle Mead’s hair is that of an Irish goddess. Straight up. She is also amazingly sweet. Even though the vampire signing was run like a production line (no photos, no lingering, no more than one book per author), to make the wait as short as possible, Richelle struck up a quick conversation with me and signed more than one of my books. How cool is that?
• Melissa de la Cruz is a rock star. She was impeccably dressed — cream-colored suit, diva shades and all — but also super sweet and the owner of a million-dollar smile. What a lady!
• Rachel Caine reminds me of a Southern belle. She’s got this infectious charm about her that makes me think of iced tea and grandmotherly kindness.
• Auntie Heather is a wisecracker. Also, whoever came up with the fanged smiley face for the Vlad books is a genius. There were lots of girls sporting Vlad totes emblazoned with the Vlad logo in bright colors that could be spotted a mile away. Impressive advertising, if you ask me.

5. Not everyone is as popular as the bloodsuckers. Okay, that’s really not a revelation. We all know that YA books targeting a mainly male audience as well as YA nonfiction has yet to catch on as well as the YA paranormal and speculative fiction genres. These were the least-populated panels that I attended — but I am really glad that I was at those panels, because I now have a few more books to add to my TBR list after listening to those authors read excerpts from their books. And can I just say that I love guy humor? The dudes on the “Boys Will Be Boys: Guys Talk YA” panel were hilarious. Here’s the breakdown of the authors on both panels:

• Boys Will Be Boys: Guys Talk YA – Ben Esch, Blake Nelson, Andrew Smith, and Allen Zadoff
• Young Adult: Truth and Fiction – Cylin Busby, Davida Wills Hurwin, and Sherri L. Smith

6. Tweeting is a social networking phenomenon that defies even long-standing convention on public speaking and events. Have YOU been to an event yet that tells you “no eating and drinking, no flash photography, and silence cell phones — but please feel free to tweet your little heart out,” and then someone proceeds to give you the hashtag for the event? Have YOU been to an event where the people you’re tweeting about see your tweets, and then either RT said tweets and/or reply to them mid-event? Have YOU been to an event where the person ON STAGE, the star of the show, was tweeting underneath the table at regular intervals?

If not — mark my words, someday soon you will know what I’m talking about. Twitter, people. It’s everywhere.

7. High school nerds make great authors when they grow up. John Green and David Levithan are both self-proclaimed ex-high school nerds, and yet now they RULE THE SCHOOL. They are both best-selling, award-winning authors with tons of fans. I’m tellin’ ya, the crowd at their panel are hardcore supporters. Nerdfighters, unite! And for all their naysayers back in the day: take that!!!

8. The YA audience is perhaps the most diverse of any book category. Sure, the children’s area at the LATFOB had lots of adults there, but I’m guessing that most of them were there to show their kids a good time and to buy some books for them. And yes, teens buy and read adult books, and there were probably a few that attended the adult fiction panels (I don’t know for certain, as I didn’t go to any).

But the LATFOB YA stage was proof of what is already easy to see in our own YA book blogging community, which is that people of all ages can and do enjoy YA books. One of the themes that popped up at several of the YA panels is the common notion that YA is “just for teens.” Which we all know is just not true. Some of the adults there were probably just parents accompanying their teens, but there were several adults (even the elderly!) that attended the YA panels on their own, asked questions, went to the YA signings, and generally showed their support for YA authors and books.

“If there must be the term young adult lit, then adult lit should be called OLD adult lit.” — David Levithan’s take on the term “YA”

9. Book swag may mean nothing to the average Joe or Jane, but for book bloggers, it’s like GOLD. I know this from personal experience now. I had my first taste of book swag at the Beautiful Creatures signing (thanks Margi and Kami!), and this is basically how it went down:

Margie and Kami: Would you like a necklace? (Indicates a selection of pink-on-black and black-on-pink dog tag necklaces with the swirly BC script on a silver chain.)

Me, out loud: Oh, sure, thank you. (Graciously picks up one.) <– Sometimes my ability to exercise self-control surprises me. Cos what I wanted to do was take ALL OF THEM.

(Me, inwardly: OH MY GOSH YESYESYES MY FIRST PIECE OF SWAG AND BEAUTIFUL CREATURES SWAG NO LESS SQUEEEEEEEEEE!)

Because fan girling out loud, especially when the person next to you is a calm and collected preteen, is probably not the best idea. But in my head? Out of control giddiness was taking place on the real.

10. In some cases, meeting fellow bloggers is just as exciting as meeting authors. Perhaps this makes me a weirdie. I don’t know if others feel similarly on this subject, or if I am breaching some book blogger code of conduct and committing a blogging faux pas. But I can tell you honestly that when I found out that Thea, half of the The Book Smugglers duo, is in fact an LA blogger and would in fact be present at LATFOB, I squeed my little heart out. It then took me ALL DAY SATURDAY to get up the nerve to email her and ask if possibly we could meet for a bit on Sunday during the Festival. When she emailed me back, sounding all sweet and excited and stuff, I squeed again.

We didn’t have much time to talk, which might have been a good thing (for Thea, at least), because I could have spent an hour talking to her and asking her questions. (Quite possibly more. I happen to be a bit of a blabber mouth.) But what I’m trying to say, peeps, is that as a newbie, and a bonafide fan of Thea and Ana’s blog, I was on cloud nine that Thea was so agreeable, friendly, and downright made of awesome.

Which leads me to another thought, kind of off-topic, but worth mentioning nonetheless: Yes, there is drama in the blogosphere. That should come as no surprise to anyone, because any group of people will have disagreements and moments of negativity. No two people are the same and that causes clashes here and there. But, as Alyssa mentioned in her post this morning, by and large we — the book blogging community — are creative, kind, wonderful people. So we should all strive to keep the hating to a minimum and concentrate on what we all love most: books, and connecting with others who also love books. GO US!!!

• • •

*All quotes are the basic gist of what the person was saying, but they are NOT verbatim. Just so ya know.
*Sadly, all my videos from the event were too large to upload to my blog. I tried. For hours. But alas, videos for this post were not meant to be. Grrr.