Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Eyes Of Texas Are No Longer Upon Me

My editor told me to bring my camera to NCTE. So I did.



Friday morning, I received a phone call telling me to go to the lobby and wait for a lift to take me to an 8 AM breakfast. That's what I sat on, while I waited. I assume the phone call was a clever scheme by jewel thieves to get me out of my room, so they could break in and steal my jewels. Alas for them and me, I didn't have any.



I went back to my room and ordered a room service breakfast, which I ate alone, considerably after 8 AM. That's what my tray looked like after I was finished.








Here's Mary Pearson, author of the extremely popular The Adoration Of Jenna Fox. We were on a panel together. Actually, we were the panel, since the other two panelist wannabes decided they didn't wanna. I bet they're sorry now, not getting to have their pictures on my blog.



And this is Edward T. Sullivan, who wrote the Harcourt Life As We Knew It discussion guide. It was an unexpected pleasure to meet him.





As you can see, the audience for the panel was large, enthusiastic, and mostly grey.






In between autographing (I forgot to take pictures) and the dinner Harcourt and Listening Library hosted in my honor, I went for a stroll on the River Walk. I saw tourists and ducks. Those are ducks.




The dinner was great, and I would show you all of us enjoying ourselves, but I was having too good a time to take pictures. This is the table, after we were finished eating and talking. Notice that none of us spilled anything worth mentioning.
My editor will probably never ask me to bring my camera anywhere ever again!
PS- I forgot to write the two good things I learned while I was at NCTE.
The first is Life As We Knew It the paperback is in its fourth printing. I have no idea what the print sizes are, but fourth is definitely better than third.
Secondly, B3 is officially in the Harcourt computer system for a Spring 2010 publication. That had been my hope, especially with the dead and the gone scheduled for Winter 2010 (January, I think). But now I know it's official.
Of course that means I actually have to write it, but that's a whole other issue!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the ducks. Could I e-mail the photo to my sister's computer (one of several I've been using until I can get a new one of my own)?

Thanks for what you said in your reply to me on the other post. I have been putting in the effort not to bug you too much about B3, but the John Stewart song came to me as I was reading the summary ending, and I couldn't help it.

I thought you did pretty well at that event. If you need photos, you could either bring somebody to take them or get your publicist to shell out the cash to hire somebody. It's not like you're destitute right now, is it (unless you've got stuff tied up in stocks, of course, like my sister and I have)?

Anonymous Santa Fe

Linda Jacobs said...

This post is so funny! I almost laughed out load a couple times!

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Good morning Anonymous Santa Fe and Linda Jacobs-

I enjoyed taking the pictures, such as they are, but I did tend to forget to take them at the more exciting moments, which is why they have such a desolate look (except for the one with ducks).

There were many other exciting moments I didn't capture, like when I was doing my gravity demostration at Coppell Middle School West and knocked over the cup of orange juice. They'll remember me there for years to come!

Anonymous said...

ROTFLOL.....thank you for making me laugh. Life has been stressful. Have to create a website but all the freebies are on the 'user hostile' side as opposed to 'user friendly'. Must be done...ummm...by today! And did I need a laugh! And it just started to rain. Thank you for the laugh! Happy T-day! Anne M. Seattle

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Happy Thanksgiving Anne M. of Seattle.

Sympathies on the website struggles. Even though I know my limitations, I'm constantly relearning them.

It rained here too, if that's any comfort. Let's hope for nice weather on Thursday for the Macy's Parade!