First Author Talk and Booksigning!

I'm on vacation in Hilton Head right now, enjoying some lovely beach weather (a nice change from the earthquake and hurricane I experienced last week).

My toddler seems to like the beach, too, although she's way too much of a diva to allow me to take her flip flops off. Little princess refuses to let the sand touch her precious toes. It's pretty hilarious.

Anyway, ever the multi-tasker, I decided to combine a little work with pleasure, and arranged to give a talk to teens at the Hilton Head Library last night.



I wasn't sure what to expect, since I've never done one of these things before. I've spoken to adults about copyright and trademark law on numerous occasions, but I've never done an author talk to teenagers. And with the aforementioned earthquake and hurricane last week, I didn't get a chance to publicize the talk as much as I would have liked, so I walked into the library last night fearing my audience would consist of my mom and grandma.

Fortunately there was a nice cozy crowd of teens from the Hilton Head Library Teen Board. This group meets monthly to organize book-related activities (they're in the middle of planning a murder mystery night for later this fall), so I knew I'd found the right audience.

The kids had tons of questions for me. Admittedly, most were not actually about the book itself, but more about being an author and what it takes to get a book published. We talked about teen fiction in general, high school English class assignments, publishing, and writing. Lots of fun!

Of course, my daughter was in the next room over, and we could hear her screaming "No! Mine!" every time the Blue's Clues DVD ended. (Apparently she didn't think her daddy was fast enough at putting in a new one.) But that just added to the ambience.

When I got back to the beach house last night, I discovered an invitation over email to a Teen Book Party at the Montgomery County Library (Maryland), so I look forward to doing more of these events!