On the Road: New Jersey

Room-service has been growing on me. I've been living on a hamburger a night, delivered right to my door. But tonight? I went to a restaurant with some great company!

But first...

The people who came out to the Borders in Bridgewater were a fun mix of folks. There were plenty of teens, a minister, a marine...and another therapist. (Plus, as you'll notice, a couple more vacant chairs in the front row!)


One person got cropped out of that photo because I had no room to take another step back. But it's alright because Frankie gets a close-up in the next photo!


I didn't ask, but I'm guessing Frankie has done a little acting. When she read Hannah Baker's lines, it gave me goosebumps. I actually met Frankie at the NYC SCBWI conference in February. That's when I signed her second copy of Thirteen Reasons Why. What happened to her first copy? She broke it.

Don't ask.

Then I went out to dinner with three very special people who came all the way from NYC. Ben Schrank is the brains behind Razorbill, the awesome Penguin imprint which made my dreams come true by publishing 13RW. Lauren Oliver is the author of Before I Fall, a book I'm extremely excited about (and you should be, too). But it doesn't come out until next year, so I'll save all of my praises until you can run out and buy it.


And here I am with Allison Verost, the Superwoman who organized this book tour. I can't thank her enough for introducing me to some amazing booksellers and working so hard to make my schedule so enjoyable.



There was one minor glitch in today's schedule (which wasn't Allison's fault, just so ya know), but it turned out to be kind of fun. Five minutes before my wake-up call was scheduled to wake me up, my phone rang. NPR was calling to do a radio interview. An interview? But I hadn't even received my wake-up call! I didn't remember there being an interview scheduled for that time. The woman asked if I wanted her to call back after I had some time to move around a bit. I told her I was ready, so she began recording and we did the interview...one minute after I woke up.

So if you hear one of my NPR interviews and I sound really loopy, that may be the one you're listening to!