ALA On Saturday!

Hey kids,

Those of you fabulous librarians attending the annual ALA conference in Anaheim this weekend, come over and say hello!

I’ll be signing at several booths on Saturday, June 28th:

11am – 12 noon Simon & Schuster Autographing Booth #2449
1-2pm, Hyperion Autographing Booth #2555 (Giving away Masquerade AND the Revelations chapter samplers!)
2-3pm BWI/Follett Autographing Booth #2234

Then I’m waltzing off to check into the Grand Californian hotel right smack in the middle of California Adventure, and then later that evening hob-nobbing with the other fabulous Disney authors at the swanky cocktail reception and then going off to the “Family” dinner, which is for staff and authors only. Dontcha love it? I love Momma Disney. We even got one-day park hoppers to go to the Disneyland parks! Yeahhh boyyy.

So when am I going to email the chapter sneak peeks? I don’t know yet. Hyperion has not given me the go-ahead yet. But I promise to send them as soon as I get the green-light.

I’m so excited for ALA, I’ve never been, and life has been really fabulous lately. And it’s awful because I can’t blog about it because I have such a big mouth. All I’ll say is the other day I had a super-awesome lunch with a beyond fawsome celebrity, who was just as gorgeous, NICE and funny as she is on television, and it was like girls just hanging out…and then last weekend we were invited over to stay at one of my husband’s client’s vacation homes, which was like staying at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water (you know the most famous house in America. Well this is the second most famous and historical house in the country—architectural buffs can probably guess where we were). The whole thing was kind of like a dream. Everything was so perfect and beautiful, and if you had told Mike and I that our lives would be THIS fun and fabulous when we were striving over-achievers in New York twelve years ago, we would have said…

You bet your ass!

I remember when I was twenty-two and my friend Morgan and I were invited to a party thrown by his neighbors next door, and Morgan lived in an East Village tenement, and it was so funny because the people next door were in their 30s and their party was lame and lights were on, and everyone kind of had that starting-to-be-fat look. And Morgan and I were only there for the FREE DRINKS. Back then we would travel ANYWHERE for a free cocktail. I still have this mentality. I’ll look at an invite and go, “Hmm, there’s a party for some lame boutique an hour away. But I kind of want to go, for FREE COCKTAILS.” I mean, c’mon.

Anyway, Morgan and I were surreptitiously drinking all their alcohol, and we were talking about what a lovely apartment it was compared to Morgan’s light-less hovel. (I don’t even remember if his place had any windows!) And this place was triple the size of his, which made it easily one of the larger apartments we had seen in New York at that time. And Morgan said he would KILL for a place like this and would be happy if in ten years he had one of these apartments.

And I looked at him, and said ARE YOU KIDDING? IF I’M LIVING IN A NON-ELEVATOR NO-DOORMAN BUILDING IN TEN YEARS ON THE FIRST FLOOR IN THE EAST VILLAGE YOU MIGHT AS WELL SHOOT ME!

I mean…REALLY.

What is the point of having no life in high school so one can go to a fancy Ivy League college and then graduate so you can sweat it out at some bank while working feverishly on your novels and working all the time…just to end up THERE?

No friggin’ way.

Which doesn’t take anything away from all the fun things that are happening now, believe me I don’t take anything for granted.

So work hard, dream big, and don’t ever think that you’re not worthy of a full-service pre-war building in Manhattan. You might not end up there, but you’ll end up somewhere close.

In other starfracker news, a Beastie Boy just moved in across the street. (Mike said hi to him yesterday when they were both taking out the trash for garbage day.) And you know Captain Kirk lives up the hill yes? It’s nice here in LA-LA-LAND.

xoxo
Mel