The time I went to Berkeley

I convinced Hubs to take me to San Francisco for Tamara Ireland Stone's launch party for Time Between Us, so it only made sense [to me] that I would head back up there when Time After Time launched. He was unable to take the time off work, so I headed up alone. 

 

You think the drive to Vegas is boring? This is worse. The only good thing about it is that drivers on the 5 like to drive fast, so even though it was 2 lanes the majority of the way, I maintained a good speed. 

 

I got up to the bookstore just before 5pm and was lucky enough to find parking right next to the door. I am horrible at parallel parking, so I was a little anxious at the idea of there only being street parking available. 

I went into the store and found this delightful display for the event. Of course, after I walked right passed it and had to ask where the display was.... 

 

I completely ruined it by buying all of the books. I may or may not have knocked a few things over. As soon as I told the girls behind the counter that I drove up from San Diego, I got the blank stare. [When am I going to learn that people just don't do things like this normally?]

They set the event area up early so I would have somewhere to camp out. I [like always] had eleventy billion books to flap, so I settled into the front row, got organized and started to wait. 

 

Tamara got to the bookstore around 6:45. She saw me, hugged me, asked about my drive and introduced me again to her husband. I gave her the gift I had for her [Bri, she LOVED them!!] and we chatted for a minute or so before she started making the rounds. 

And there were cupcakes with the book titles on them!

 

I met Anna and Keiko [who also came up from San Diego] before the signing and it was so awesome to FINALLY meet them both!!

The event started just after 7 and it was kicked off with Gayle taking her shoes off because so many people wanted to see them. They both have duets [Gayle: I have a duet of duets] and talked about how they were going to read parts of their books.

 

G: I just finished Time After Time on the plane, did you know you were going to do that? You're juggling so many things and how did you do it?

T: And was it really hard? Yes. I wrote the first book hoping it would be a series. I was so invested in the characters I felt like I could write them forever. And by the time I got done with TBU, I was done with it. But I was so happy that they picked up a sequel. How about you?

G: With If I Stay, no. I didn't think it was going to be a viable book and definitely didn't think it was going to be a sequel. And then the characters started waking me up and I started feeling a responsibility to them. I didn't want to deal with the immediate future and as soon as I made that decision, Adam's story came out. 

For Just One Day, there was a week where there wasn't going to be a sequel. And FYI, I was going to end it exactly where it did. 

As I was writing Just One Day, I had to figure out a lot about Willem. I had to figure out a deep backstory. Why was that day so important? You have to plant the seeds in book one if there's going to be a book 2. 

T: I had a lot of fun with writing a new point of view, writing similar situations from another point of view. 

Tamara talked about Time Between Us and then read from it. She read a scene about Maggie's house first from Anna's POV and then from Bennett's. 

G: The shift of perpsective was fun. It changes everything. You see the entire year and you learn more about the characters and all of these moments where they could have passed each other. 

Gayle read a piece from Just One Day that dealt with the watch and then another piece from Just One Year that also dealt with the watch. 

 

They talked about both being pantsers. I missed most of this conversation because I was taking pictures....

G: Do you feel that each book has their own arc and then together tell a bigger story?

T: Yes. Absolutely. TBU is mostly Anna's story and how she started strong and got stronger. And Bennett's is the same way. His life is in no way miserable, he's not missing anything. It's how he is seen in her eyes. 

G: I called mine books Trojan horse romance. I've got the army in there and look they're in Paris and now they're kissing and now they're more than kissing and then bam!

[Then there was a topic about family.  I blame these two ladies for being so charismatic that I couldn't focus on anything but them talking.]

 

T: In all 4 books, there's a part of family. Bennett is attracted to Anna's normal stable family and Anna is attracted to Bennett's adventure and fly by the seat of your pants life. 

G: Maybe it's because I was a mother when I started writing. 

G: Do you get a lot of people asking about the third book?

T: All the time! Maybe it's because they're conditioned to trilogies. 

G: How many people want a third Mia and Adam book? [I raised my hand] It's so flattering, but let's look at what it would be. It's a book for the sake of being a book. Mia and Adam cook breakfast. Mia and Adam go for a walk. Mia and Adam kiss, but they've been together for a while, so it's not that hot. Or there's conflict.  Mia and Adam have a disease. Mia and Adam have a baby and it dies. Does anyone want that? If you do, there's something wrong with you. 

T: With Time After Time, I had all of the readers in my head. I had to figure out a way to get everyone out. [I missed most of her answer, surprise, surprise]

 

G: Why do you always write girls POV first?

T: It never occurred to me to write it from his POV. And it's his gift... I loved the idea of a reluctant hero. I though that would be more interesting to show from the POV from the girl who loves him POV. Think Spider-Man from Mary Jane's POV. 

And with the second one, it made sense. Once I got to know him so well, I thought it would be just fun to tell the story from his POV. 

Was it hard? Yes. I don't think I would have done it if my editor hadn't pushed me to do it. FYI I've never been a 17 year old boy. I can get in the mindset of a 16 year old girl in high school. My husband read all of my drafts and told me when a guy wouldn't say those things. I had a hard time with the general male to male interactions. [At this point, there was a comment from Gayle about Tamara scratching her balls in public or something like that.  Seriously, my notes are shiteous.]

T: How about you?

 

G: It never occurred to me to write a male POV. Adam was easy to access because he's most like me. Especially the mean Adam in the beginning. 

T: Let's talk settings. You have some great ones in your books, have you been to all of them?

G: Yes. India sort of sticks with you, but I made the entire family go to Mexico for Spring break. What about you?

T: Yes. We had to go to Paris for "research". I wrote 3 chapters and then told my editor to put them on hold. They were the last 3 chapters I worked on to make sure they were authentic.

G: I don't like reading travel books and it's important to me to have little details that make the location.  It's not an information dump like in a travel book.

And then the floor was opened up for Q&A.

 

What are you working on now?

 

T: I just told a book and it's awesome. I was feeling a little sad, missing Anna and Bennett, so it's been great working on that. And it'll be out Spring 2015. [Too. Far. Away. I also might have said that out loud.]

G: I worked on If I Stay for myself. It was saved under "why not". This is a book that I've cheated with, it feels amazing. I don't have a title, but I will tease by saying that it's the hottest guy I've ever written. 

Do you have some routine when writing?

 

T: I can write anywhere as long as I have headphones. I don't listen to music a lot, I can't get the words down if there are other words in my head. I listen to a lot of movie soundtracks. 

G: Get the kids out the door and coffee. Sometimes I will actually put on clothes and go to the cafe. It's not always productive, but it needs to be done. People always ask how do I find the time. It's like closet space, you work with what you have. 

Do you write a requisite amount of words?

G: No. I write until I feel like there's almost nothing left. And then the next day I go back through everything I've done.

T: I do the same.  Sometimes I just spend the day editing what I wrote the day before.

G: Yes, because it's all crap.

 

Fan cast for your books?

 G: I don't have one for If I Stay. And then when they did cast it, it was perfect. And the guy who is playing Adam? He's even hotter. Willem is the guy from the Lumineers, but not as pretty. 

T: I don't have an Anna. [Her son said Lorde and then Tamara said maybe because she has long curly hair]. Bennett is kind of Jeremy from TVD. I like the nice guys. Anna's father will definitely be George Clooney. 

What inspired you to be a writer?

 

T: I've always written for myself. It's cathartic. I wanted to write something that was for me, something that wasn't watching tv or going to the movies. Writing for young adults, I have to credit Judy Blume. In my dream of dreams, I want to create stories that people read over and over again. 

G: The romantic answer would be that the stories inspired me. The realistic answer is that poverty inspired me. I was a journalist and we had bought and apartment and then I had a baby. I had 3 pieces killed in one month. Someone told me that I should write and it was like a light bulb went off.

 

There were more questions, but I just couldn't take my eyes off of these two ladies. I do remember someone asking if Tamara was attached to Cyndi Lauper and that's where she got the title for Time After Time. Gayle and Tamara instead bust out into the song.

The signing started around 8:15. I got up to Tamara first and told her that I had to ration what I had for her, that's why there was only 3.

 

I gave Gayle her huge pile and she started working on them. She asked where I came from and when I said San Diego, she said that she saw my tweet about it. And also mentioned how I was a really good friend for getting all of the books for other people. I calked myself a pack mule [thank you, Kami Garcia] and Gayle started laughing. We talked about my necklace [hand stamped charm that says "Book Boys are Better" from Charmed by Books] and how much she liked it.  Meanwhile, I loaded up on swag...

  

And then Tamara asked if I was leaving right away.  I said yes.  She asked if I could wait a minute and sent her husband out to the car... When he came back, she showed me four different foreign editions of Time Between Us and told me to pick one.  I grabbed the pretty pretty oversized UK version.

 

While Tamara was signing it, she was telling Gayle that I'm her Kevin Bacon.  She can connect around 100 readers of Time Between Us back to me.  This woman....she slays me in the best way ever.

After another round of hugs, I made my way through the store, saying goodbye to everyone I had met.  And I didn't get pictures with anyone. *face palm*

Tamara and Gayle are magical together.  This ridiculous recap and lack of good note taking is mostly my fault and partially theirs.  If they weren't so damn entertaining, perhaps I would have been able to do better.

Now. Go pick up all of their books.  You won't be disappointed.

The time we drove to San Francisco

I got a copy of Time Between Us from Ava when we went to ALA. I admit it did sit in my TBR stack for a while, but once I found it, I read it in one night.

And as I do when I'm done with a book I love, I checked the author page to see about appearances. When I saw the launch party was going to be in San Francisco, I figured it was completely doable. Hubs will usually agree to any sort of road trip.

Before the release date, I had asked Tamara if she would give me Bennett in my inscription if I drove up to attend the release party. And this was her answer:

A few days later I got this:

We left at 6am. I'm not a morning person, so I showered on autopilot and then climbed into the car to go back to sleep. I woke up to being stuck in rush hour traffic around Valencia. And after a few pit stops, we arrived in the city. And it's super gorgeous. Gas was stupid expensive.

We stopped at a different Books Inc location first. I wanted to see about leaving Dear Bully and my arc of Tilt for Ellen Hopkins who was signing in 2 days. After talking to the manager, he told me that "their authors" tend to only want to sign for the "fans who take the time to show up."

I had offered to buy books from the other authors who were signing [Maggie Stiefvater and David Levithan] and any shipping costs and it was still no. Alas...

We had several hours to kill, so we played tourist by finding the Golden Gate Bridge.

We went back into the Castro district, where the bookstore was and walked around the neighborhood. I proceeded to eat my weight in NY style cheesecake, bacon sliders and garlic parmesan fries.

We got to the bookstore around 6. It's narrow, but surprisingly big. We were the first people there and I quickly claimed the front row. Ingrid was there early, setting up her books and heard me mention to one of the employees that we drove up. We chatted for a few minutes before I struck up a conversation with a woman named Martha, who after hearing my story about the other Books Inc, offered to take my books and get them signed for me.

It started just after 7. Ingrid started talking about the inspiration for her book, Valkyrie Rising. She is of Norwegian decent and went to visit Norway with family. She was able to find the house that her great-grandfather lived in and the name of the farm is the name of the town in the book.

After telling another antidote in which someone flipped their boat and clung to a rock until they were rescued by helicopter, Ingrid read two scenes.

From there, Tamara took over.

She talked about how the idea of Time Between Us came to her.

She was having a conversation with her husband about superpowers and when asked, she said would want to time travel. Not to see the future or touch a dinosaur, but to see Green Day on Gilman Street.

She then also read two scenes from the book.

After Tamara was done, they started lining people up. Tamara and Ingrid both had a game set up and prizes, but with the amount of people who showed up, they weren't able to do it.

We were first in line. When I walked up to Ingrid, I gave her the arc I had and she just smiled and said "All the way from San Diego..."

I laughed and said yes. Tamara whipped her head around and said "You're you?" While Ingrid signed my book, Tamara repeatedly hugged me while saying she couldn't believe I was there.

She gave me a prize that she had specially made for me, along with the lobby card promoting the launch party that she had saved for me.

I gave Tamara my arc and finished copy of Time Between Us and asked if I could PLEEEEEEEASE have Bennett. I then explained how Kassiah and I have a game about getting boys signed to us and how Kass has Étienne [to which Tamara said SHE wanted Étienne] and I have Elizabeth Norris' Ben.

And she said, "Now you have a Ben and a Bennett".

Before we left, Tamara and I took a picture and she handed me another prize since the game couldn't happen [the pretty, pretty journal pictured above]. We started chatting up a little more and then her mom pointed out the extensive line of people!!

We quickly left the store [after thanking everyone and getting stopped about my Edgar Allen Crow sweatshirt] and started the long drive home.  Got home just before 4 am, ridiculously exhausted, but it was so worth it.

Edit: on the evening that this post was published, I received a DM from Maggie, the children's department rep for Books Inc. She apologized for the behavior of the manager I dealt with, told me he was talked to about the situation and then offered to comp me the books from the signing to make up for the customer service.

I did decline the free books, Maggie's actions speak volumes as to what the customer service for Books Inc is really like.

The time all of the books had pretty covers

So obviously, a book cover is important when marketing a book. I don't remember there being such a big deal about cover pictures being released until I started reading YA books.  But, those marketing people are doing something right, because I've bought several books just from the cover alone...

The upside to living in SoCal is that LA is really close and a lot of authors come through LA eventually. However, the idea of "eventually" is one that I'm not too familiar with, I really don't like to wait.  Such is the case for all of the books to follow. :D

Illuminate by Aimee Agresti sucked me in right away. The dress, the shadow of the wings, and the model are all gorgeous. I especially love the script of the title.  I was able to get my hands on an ARC and read it in one night.  After reading it, I contacted Aimee and we started talking about tour dates.  She's always been so so so sweet about my incessant nagging.  Once I saw that she posted her first date at Fountain Bookstore, I wanted to support her, so I ordered the book. If/when I get to meet her, I'll ask her to sign my ARC.

I had seen the cover for The Selection and was absolutely hooked.  I love the colors and the dress and the everything... I had asked Kiera if she was going to be touring when the book was released and because she was pregnant at the time, she didn't think there would be too many events.  I was also able to get my hands on an ARC [thanks, Kassiah], so when I saw Kiera's events start to post, I just picked a date and ordered away...

I read The Sky is Everywhere after a swoony book reccommendation that Lo from Swoontini made about it.  These ladies have never let me down before, so I was all over that book ASAP.  As always, they didn't disappoint, it was amazing...

Anyhoo.

Since I was a bit late to the party on this story, it was already in paperback by the time I read it, so Jandy wasn't doing any sort of touring for it.  And then, one day when I was stalking Jay Asher's website, I noticed that he was going to be at an event that Jandy Nelson was going to be at.  The problem is that it was going to be nearly impossible to get to Palo Alto on a Friday...

I don't even know where I heard about Amy Plum's books.  All I do know is that the cover for Die For Me is amazing, I read that book in one sitting and immediately went on a search for her tour dates.  After seeing that none of her dates were remotely near me [sobsobsob], I picked Parnassus Books to buy from.  I ordered Amy's books and Jandy's book on the same day and then tweeted about needing a private plate or helicopter so I could get around to all of the events. 

And Amy's response was epic:

I really hope I get to meet her one day.  And both covers are just so gorgeous. I'm so in love with Paris that it's a little scary.

If only book covers would get ugly.  I bet it would save me some money.