What I did on my first trip to ALA

I’m back from my first visit to the American Library Association Annual Conference, and let me tell you, I am exhausted. It was a whirlwind trip! Here’s what happened (warning: this is a long post):

I arrived in Chicago on Sunday night and met up with Trish Bendix, AfterEllen’s blog editor, for a cocktail at my hotel. I just realized this minute that I was incredibly stupid and didn’t take a photo with her. This is lame, because it is so rare that AfterEllen folks get together in real life — and now there’s no evidence!

The next morning, I got up bright and early and headed over to the convention center. It was the size of an airplane hangar.

Luckily, the Little, Brown booth was situated right inside the entrance to the exhibit hall. I didn’t even realize I had found the booth until someone said, “Malinda? Are you Malinda?” I turned around and there was a Little, Brown staffer (I’m sorry I can’t remember who it was) to welcome me to the exhibits. I quickly snapped a photo of the giant poster of my book cover on the wall of the booth:

Then, because my signing wasn’t due to happen for a couple of hours, I wandered around the enormous exhibit hall in a daze. Somebody tried to give me a free book, and I was like, “Uh, I just got here, blah blah,” and I didn’t even take it! What was I thinking? (Don’t worry — later on I got over it and began to pick up books.)

A little before 11:30 I made my way back to the conveniently located Little, Brown booth and had my first book signing. It was a bit of a blur. Once the people started coming by (including a couple of AfterEllen readers and one Wellesley alum — thanks for  introducing yourselves!), there was no break until all the advance copies were gone — and 45 minutes had passed.

During this signing, author Jacqueline Woodson stopped by with a girl I had thought was her daughter. I wanted to say more to Jacqueline, like, “OMG, I’m so excited you’re standing here in front of me!” but she whisked the girl away too quickly (probably because she was being courteous, since there were lots of people in line behind her). When I got home, Linda Villarosa (also an author, and an all-around amazing woman) emailed me to say the girl was actually her daughter, and we just missed each other at the exhibit hall. What a small world.

I had a second signing at 1:30 with the nice people at BWI, a book wholesaler. We went through all their copies in about half an hour. By then I’d learned to concentrate when writing people’s names, because otherwise I would be tempted to not spell them correctly. I don’t know why this is the case. I also noticed that I tend to shorten my name when signing it repeatedly, so if you got an ARC that was signed by “Malin Lo,” uh, sorry!

A lot of people asked me if my hand was getting tired signing, and at the time the answer was no, but I noticed that on Tuesday, my right arm mysteriously hurt. Hmm. Signing-related injury?

Between my signings I had lunch with author Lara Zielin, who was at ALA to sign advance copies of her book Donut Days. I stopped by her signing, where she was also giving away donut holes.

(By the way, I read Donut Days, which comes out Aug. 6, on my flight home, and I thought it was funny, thought-provoking and quite different. This is because it’s about a girl growing up with evangelical Christian parents; Zielin writes about faith and religion and tricky related issues with a light, humorous touch. I really enjoyed it.)

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the exhibits and snagging as many ARCs as I could find. I think because it was Monday, the second-to-last day of the conference, there weren’t so many left, but I did get a copy of Jennifer Brown‘s Hate List and Jessica Verday‘s The Hollow (thanks to Lara Zielin’s friend who gave me hers!), plus I got to meet E. Lockhart, who autographed a copy of her fantastic Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks for me.

Monday night, Little, Brown set up a wonderful dinner for me, Sarah Ockler (Twenty Boy Summer) and Justina Chen Headley (North of Beautiful), where we got to hobnob with influential librarians. Some of them had already read Ash and even heaped praise on it, which still seems surreal to me. Can I just say, I am so glad I left grad school to write this book!

After dinner we went to the Printz Awards reception, where we heard inspiring speeches from M.T. Anderson, Margo Lanagan, E. Lockhart, and Melina Marchetta. This was followed by schmoozing and cocktails, during which I discovered that not only are the Little, Brown staffers super nice, they are hilarious.

Overall, Little, Brown made me feel like a superstar. Seriously, they are the best people ever, and I am so happy that they are publishing Ash.

Now I’m back home, facing a daunting number of unread email messages, not to mention a little thing called my wedding which is happening in … a week and a half. So, forgive me if things become a bit erratic around here. More later!

Related posts:

1. Last ASH hardcover event, ALA, and Sirens
2. ALA 2010!
3. Photo Friday: ALA slideshow

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