Austin Teen Book Fest 2013 #ATBF13

I have wanted to attend the Austin Teen Book Festival for 3 years and could never make it happen. When this year's line up was released, I nearly fell out of my chair in excitement - Rae Carson, Marissa Meyer, Holly Black, MAGGIE STIEFVATER! - and I was determined to be there.

Thankfully, I was able to make it happen and it was an almost perfect day.

via ATBF

Maggie opened the festival up with a poignant and hilarious speech. She made some really great points about how creative types typically have equal stores of fear and imagination, and how we need to be able to balance the two somehow. She said that, as a writer, a person plays the "what if" game - what if someone could physically manifest their dreams? What if shapeshifters were real? - and that that game says that all the dreadful possibilities are just as important as the magical ones.  She spoke briefly about her novels, including the beautiful, perfect creation that is Sam Roth and then The Raven Cycle books, and she ended it by saying that "we are all Dream Thieves because we can choose to manifest our dreams or our nightmares."

It was a really great way to open up the day, and once Maggie spoke, my friend and I headed up to our first panel of the day - Into Hearts of Darkness, which featured Jon Scovron, Mari Mancusi, Robin Wasserman, April Tucholke, Victoria Scott and the fantastic Holly Black.

There were several great questions posed to the authors here, but my favorite tidbits were uttered by Robin and Holly, both in response to the query: Where do your ideas come from?

Robin quoted the amazing Patrick Ness and said that, "One idea is never enough for a book." She talked about how he says he usually gets The Idea, and then other Ideas appear and they all sync and congeal and suddenly, this mass of ideas is a Living, Breathing, Thing, and then there's enough to be a book. I thought that was a really fantastic statement. Holly said the best advice regarding ideas she ever got was to "Honor your obsessions." That's a pretty cool idea, too - the thought that if you love something, you should probably write about it.

It was a great start to the day, and then we went back to the main hall to watch the Fierce Reads ladies face off against the Dark Days gals in a silly set of games. The best part of this, for me, was when David Tennant appeared on the screen and everybody went nuts. O DOCTOR, MY DOCTOR, I LOVE YOU SO!

(Obligatory side note: There were SO. MANY. WHOVIANS THERE. I was basically like, "Hello, you are my PEOPLE!") 

Then, we grabbed some lunch and bought a few books - I got ASYLUM by Madeleine Roux and THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE by Leila Sales - and headed upstairs to try to snag a good couple of seats in the Dark Days panel room. (We ended up on the 2nd row - SWEET.)

Madeleine Roux, via my OG iPhone

The Dark Days panel was, by far, my favorite of the entire day. It included Madeleine Roux, Sherry Thomas, Mindy McGinness, Michelle Gagnon, Amy Tintera, and Rae Carson.

These ladies are clearly all friends, and they all played off of one another so well - and they're all hilarious, so that definitely helped. A couple of observations here: Michelle Gagnon is so cool, I want to read all of her books, ever, now. DON'T TURN AROUND and DON'T LOOK NOW have been on my radar, but she's so fantastic, I kind of want them in my grabby little hands right now. She and Rae both had this really calm, approach and it was just super cool. Mindy is hilarious - and I mean, snarky and smart, and I never would have guessed that she spends her days as a high school librarian. Biggest surprise of the day? Sherry Thomas, who's glasses and general look do sort of speak quiet librarian but is smart and genuinely a riot who had a snarky remark to almost every question, including how, sometimes, ideas are on sale at Costco, and how hers was a free sample.

Favorite moment, though?

Madeleine Roux's answer to "Where do your ideas come from?" The answer involved blood sacrifice by the light of the full moon, a spirit named Dave, and naked dancing.

Like you do.

via my OG iPhone

After Dark Days was Fierce Reads, which was in the same room, so we were able to settle in and really enjoy it.  The authors here were Leila Sales, Marissa Meyer, S.A. Bodeen, and Alexandra Coutts. The tone of this panel was a lot less snark and a bit quieter, but the result was the same - these ladies love to write and they loved interacting with their readres. Having already read Meyer's works, the other three authors were virtually unknown to me, but now I can say that I need to pick up TUMBLE
& FALL by Alexandra, STAT. The idea of a novel that focuses on the time spent waiting for a natural disaster to strike is scary in the best, most real way, and I really have to find myself a copy of that book soon.

Our last panel of the day was Powers Strange and Perilous, which included Robin LaFevers, Lisa McMann, Cinda Williams Chima, Rosemary Clement-Moore, Melissa de la Cruz and her husband Michael Johnston, and the awesome Maggie Stiefvater. (FLAILY FLAIL FLAIL.) I've read something by everyone on this panel with the exception of Lisa and Cinda, so this was a fun one for me. It was interesting to hear how everyone thinks of the supernatural abilities that they've given their characters, and I especially liked how Robin spoke about the extraneous abilities she gave the ladies in her His Fair Assassins series - I love that she correlates them to the ways the infants struggled at birth (which sounds morbid, I know... because it is). Maggie was, as usual, hilarious and awesome but still made a lot of interesting points, and then it was off to the closing speech with the wonderful Holly Black.

Holly spoke of fear, too, and how one of her lifelong obsessions (vampires) manifested from her childhood fears. We really enjoyed her speech, but I'm not going to lie - the lines for autographs were becoming a bit intimidating, so we hopped in line a few minutes before she finished up so we could be sure to have a couple minutes with each author for whom we had a book to be signed.

All in all, I got Leila to sign my copy of THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE, Marissa to sign my copy of CINDER (I already have a signed copy of SCARLET), and Maggie signed my copies of both THE RAVEN BOYS and THE DREAM THIEVES. My little exchange which her while she was signing my books is also one of my favorite things of the whole day.

via my OG iPhone

Actual conversation:

Me: Hi! Thanks so much for coming today!
Maggie: No problem; I love it. <begins signing>
Me: Also, thanks for creating Sam Roth. He remains my favorite YA Boy ever.
Maggie: Well, he's a good book boyfriend to have.
Me: Right? I figure he'll sing me a song and then turn into a wolf with gorgeous amber eyes. What could be bad about that?
Maggie, as she finishes signing, with a grin: Shedding.

HA. And now you know why I say she's 100% awesome. ;)

Anyway, the ATBF was really great. I am thoroughly impressed with how smoothly it ran, how easy the schedule seemed to flow, and how genuinely kind all of the authors seemed. Will definitely try to attend next year's event! 

Thanks to Book People and all the volunteers for making it so great! And a huge thanks to the authors for being generous with their time.