Favorite Moments from SCBWI L.A.: Part One

So I think the maniacal bunny men are sufficiently subdued enough (and the kids are finally asleep!) for me to blog about my many adventures from SCBWI L.A.!! There's so much to tell, I think I'll have to sift it down to my favorite moments--and probably break it into more than one post. So here we go:

1. Almost missing the plane to L.A.--and no, I didn't sleep in and get to the airport late. In fact, I got up at 3:30 in the morning and got to the airport by 5:00 am for my 6:00 flight. My BFFs, and conference buddies, Brodi Ashton and Emily Wing Smith got there shortly after me. We sat there waiting for our flight to be called . . . and waited and waited and waited some more . . . until the guy with the little microphone suddenly called out in a very snippy voice, "Passengers Ashton, Despain, and Smith, this is your final call. Are you planning on joining us this morning?!"

The snippy man with the microphone claims that he called our flight several times, and called our names individually several times. But I still think he was lying. I mean, we were staring right at him the whole time . . . But anyway, we made it onto the already filled plane just in time, and apart from poor Brodi's eardrum almost bursting mid-flight, we made it to the conference without a hitch.

2.The Tenners Meet The Bloggers Lunch: One of the best things I did while in L.A. was to get to meet some of my fellow tenners, and some of the awesome YA bloggers I've made friends with on twitter. Fellow Tenners were Kim Derting, Lindsey Leavitt, Christy Raedeke, Jennifer Cervantes, Suzanne Young, Denise Jaden, and Matthew Kirby. And a few other authors showed up, too. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Beautiful Creatures), along with Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why) and even Holly Black (Spiderwick Chronicles) was there for a bit.

The bloggers included Catt from The Dreamer Reader, Alicia from Shooting Stars Mag, Vania from Reverie Book Reviews, and Khy from Frenetic Reader. Some of the bloggers came with their moms--who I think are some of the coolest moms I've ever met!! I mean, any mom who would drive their teenage daughters out to meet a bunch of authors are totally awesome in my book.

(Khy, Catt, and Alicia--3 of my favorite bloggers! Too bad I can't get the picture bigger.)

Khy and her Mom made each of authors a cool gift bag full of specific presents based on our blog posts and our books.

My bag included:

A purple matchbox Mustang . . . Because I LOVE Mustangs and will eventually buy myself one someday.

Purple duct tape, so hubby can make me something cool to wear out of it.

A box of pastels . . .Because the MC in my book is an artists and needs a new box of pastels.

And a box of Ghiredelli Brownie Mix bigger than my head! (Because I'm a chocoholic.) The box was so big I couldn't fit it into my suitcase so Brodi offered to carry it home for me . . .Hey, wait a second, I haven't gotten those back yet!!

(Me with the brownie box bigger than my head. Seriously, Bro, where are my brownie?!)

The other cool thing about lunch is that I got to share chips and salsa with the awesome Jay Asher.

(This is Jay sitting across from me at the restaurant wearing an Egyptian hat given to him by Khy. I know the picture is really fuzzy, but I put it in here to prove that I really did eat lunch with JAY ASHER!!)

3. Meeting Sherman Alexie . . .and he LOVED our shirts. At the beginning of the conference, each member of the faculty was forced to share one word with the nearly 1000 conference goers in the audience. After many got up to share inspirational words like hope, listen, acceptance, Sherman Alexie got up and said, "Inappropriate." Well, we were all already crushing on Sherman's brilliance and plotting a way to get to meet him, so hearing that gave us the perfect plan. You see, Brodi, Emily, and I all made "bad review" shirts in order to "wear" the things people had said about our books. Well, Emily's shirt just happened to say "inappropriate" because of a ridiculous B&N review of her book . . . So we knew we HAD to show our shirts to Sherman. So anyway, Sherman LOVED out shirts and was happy to take a picture with us.

Me: Blasphemous (and looking very shiny), Sherman the Awesome, Emily: Inappropriate, and Brodi: Violent

Okay, wow, this post is getting long . . .and we're only 24 hours into the conference. Let's adjourn for now, but be sure to leave a comment. For everyone who comments on this (and future) SCBWI L.A. posts will be entered into a drawing to win one of three awesome AUTOGRAPHED books I picked up at the conference.