To kick-off the nomination process for stops on my upcoming book tour, I flew to New York City last week. I gave a presentation at one school while schools across the country watched online. Of course, flying from California to New York with snowstorms approaching, everyone (including me) was nervous about whether I'd make it on time. I couldn't miss it!
Thankfully, I made it.
Before speaking at the school, I went to my publisher's office to have brunch with some of the many people who continue to have so much excitement for Thirteen Reasons Why (which is almost 6.5 years old now!).
Then I filmed a few videos that will be posted online in the near future. Like I always do after recorded interviews, I'm now thinking, "Why did I admit to that?" for a few of the answers.
We walked down to the Little Red Schoolhouse and Elizabeth Irwin High School (which is a mouthful, so thankfully they refer to it as LREI) for the webcast.
The students I spoke with in person were great. And I'm glad they were there! We had a back-up plan to do the webcast from the Penguin offices, with people from Penguin acting as my audience, if there was a snow day in NYC, but it all worked out. The front row in this pic is mostly made up of people from Penguin and School Library Journal (co-sponsors of this event).
The webcast will be posted on the SLJ site soon, and I'll link to that here when it's up.
It's weird being in such a large city where I have several really good friends, but having so little time to see any of them. I did get a chance to make a loop through Central Park with Carolyn Mackler, though. Here I am munching on goodies from Magnolia Bakery, a shop that gets a shout-out in our book, The Future of Us. In the background is Belvedere Castle, a location in one of Carolyn's previous books.
Before leaving, I had a delicious dinner with a few of my favorite people at Penguin: Carmela Iaria, Jessica Almon, and Ben Schrank. (If you're from Penguin and aren't in this photo, you should've been there. Because you're one of my favorite people, too!)
Back in California (you'll notice the clothes in the following photos don't look as warm), I was invited to participate in a stop on Lauren Oliver's book tour. Lauren was an editor at Razorbill when they bought Thirteen Reasons Why. When she became an author herself, I gave a quote for her first book, Before I Fall. And now she's promoting her eighth book, Panic.
Meanwhile, I'm still working on book three.
*ahem*
Before the event, I got to meet up with my good friend, now a Razorbill author herself(!), Romina Russell. Her book, Zodiac, comes out this December.
I got to the bookstore early, but not as earlier as I was hoping because of the L.A. Marathon and a cab that never showed up. I always like to take a sneak peek at how many people are sitting in the audience about 30 minutes before we begin.
But this time, I wasn't sneaky enough. You got me, Romance Bookie!
The chairs filled up nicely.
As someone who doesn't take selfies often, I'm somehow ending up with two selfies in this one blog post. And while Ellen's selfie at the Academy Awards (which I watched while in NYC!) broke Twitter with its massive retweets, I'm certain the crowd in ours reads much better books.
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