Good morning my friends!  Today’s the day….October’s round of Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-Thon is upon us.

This is my third go round and as was the case for the first several I’ll be flying by the seat of my pants.  I’m in the midst of one book (Empty by Suzanne Weyn) which I’ll finish up then from there on out I’ll just pick from my bookcase based on my mood.  I already know that this Read-a-Thon will be a bit more relaxed and slower going this is because of two things I already know going out of the gate (1) I never do the full 24 hours and (2) I’m sick.  This means I likely won’t even make 12 hours this round but I’ll be reading and cheering and hanging out having fun with everyone regardless.

Here’s how things traditionally work in these parts:

• Blog Updates - I’ll be posting to my blog regularly, but it won’t be in individual hourly posts. I don’t want to spam you my lovely readers so if you want to keep track of my progress bookmark this post cause this is where I’ll be divulging all my Read-a-Thon secrets.
• Books - I didn’t choose a stack of books for the occasion, as is the case with most of my blogging practices I’m going fly by the seat of my pants. Because I’m a slow reader and want to feel a sense of accomplishment, I’ll most likely be reading short, quick books.
• Break Time - Lupus = fatigue, which then = illness. My body will tell me when it needs a break and I’ll be listening. So if I go silent for awhile I’m probably off in ZZZZ-land.
• Socializing – I feel like a big part of this event is the social aspect so I’ll do my best to be out and about cheering people on *but* since the main event is about reading it may not be at my usual levels. You might see me around some mini-challenges
• Post Format – I’m going to post using the format I used for all of readathon. A format that I originally poached from Gail of Ticket to Anywhere. Thanks Gail!

I’ve already got a load of laundry in, I’ve cleaned the kitchen and I’m about to head to the grocery store to pick up some protein.  Once I get back I’ll be fluffing my pillows and plopping down on the couch to get my Read-a-Thon on!   Please do check back now and again to see how I’m doing, I’ll be prompting everyone with my progress on Twitter. Good luck to all the readers, a great big helping of thanks to all the cheerleaders and giant kudos to the organizers! Let the games begin….

Progress Report:

Title of book(s) read since last update:

• Hour 1: Empty by Suzanne Weyn
• Hour 2: Empty by Suzanne Weyn
• Hour 3: Break! No book in hand
• Hour 4-5: Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols
• Hour 6: Break! No book in hand
• Hour 7-8: Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols
• Hour 9-10: Inexcusable by Chris Lynch
• Hour 11: Break! No book in hand
• Hour 12-24: The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade

• Hour 1 & 2: A very stark book about global warming and loss of fossil fuels. Not dystopian, totally plausible which is freaky. Natural disasters abound. Warring towns and looting, flooding and famine.  Hope finally prevails though.
• Hour 3: No book read – shower, laundry folding, resetting my reading space
• Hour 4-5: Meg is a reprobate (though lightly so – drinking, pot, etc) who gets busted with her friends and is punished by being required to ride-a-long with the cop who arrested her.  Turns out said officer has graduated a year ahead of her in HS.  Meg and John (the cop) continue to learn more about each other and push each other’s buttons.  Good push/pull in this story.
• Hour 6: No book read – had lunch, did a bit of cheerleading
• Hour 7-8: Meg and John fight their mutual attraction but only for so long.  Good teen-aged angst slightly predictable ending but good.
• Hour 9-10: A high schooler gets progressively more aggressive and after becoming involved with drugs and alcohol rapes a good friend after a graduation party.  Loads of family dysfunction but not explored deeply enough to really show the progression of how he got to rape.
• Hour 11: No book read – general net surfing and chatting with a friend for a bit
• Hour 12-24: Alona (the HS queen bee) suddenly dies at the hands of a school bus but is thrilled to find out that Will (the local outcast goth) can talk to dead people. She is currently trying to recruit him to find out why she’s in the middle ground between the living and heaven. There is an asshole school principle on a power trip, a creepy psychiatrist that clearly has ulterior motives to put Will in an institution and a mother that loves him but is being misguided by the latter. Story progresses as one would think, bad things happen but then good ultimately prevails.

• Hour 1: 0
• Hour 2: 1
• Hour 3-6: 0
• Hour 7-8: 1
• Hour 9-10: 1
• Hour 11-13: 0
• Hour 14-24: 1
  

• Hour 1: 59 pages
• Hour 2: 57 pages
• Hour 3: 0 pages
• Hour 4: 62 pages
• Hour 5: 54 pages
• Hour 6: 0 pages
• Hour 7-8: 129 pages
• Hour 9-10: 165 pages
• Hour 11: 0 pages
• Hour 12-13: 110 pages
• Hour 14-24: 171 pages

• Hour 1: 45 minutes
• Hour 2: 45 minutes
• Hour 3: 0 minutes
• Hour 4: 60 minutes
• Hour 5: 45 minutes
• Hour 6: 0 minutes
• Hour 7-8: 105 minutes
• Hour 9-10: 90 minutes
• Hour 11: 0 minutes
• Hour 12-13: 95 minutes
• Hour 14-24: 120 minutes

• Hour 1&2: Couch
• Hour 3: Moving around the house during breaktime
• Hour 4-13: Couch
• Hour 14-23: Bed
• Hour 24: Couch

• Hour 1-3: Classical music station on digital cable
• Hour 4-5: Blues music station on digital cable
• Hour 6: Movie – 2012
• Hour 7-13: 80′s music station on digital cable
• Hour 14-23: iPod on shuffle various genre
• Hour 24: Movie – 2012 (it’s always on cable!)

• Hour 1: Bowl of Crispix cereal
• Hour 2-5: None
• Hour 6: Roast beef/American on tortilla w/ some salt & vinegar chips
• Hour 7-8: None
• Hour 9-10: Crackers
• Hour 11: None
• Hour 12-13: Salt & vinegar chips
• Hour 14-24: Egg & Cheese on plain bagle

Last year, I was excited to read and review Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush which I enjoyed immensely.  If you recall I may have mentioned (once or twice) that I love me some bad boy and BOYYYYY is Patch bad.  So bad it’s good!

Now, here we are a year(ish) later and the sequel to the fabulousness, Crescendo, will be hitting the streets on October 19th.  Thanks to Simon and Schuster I was lucky enough to score a review copy (which I’ve read)and can tell you book two is just as good as the first.  Nora and Vee are still as inquisitive as ever and Patch is bad to the bone baby!

That’s why I’m super doubly excited to announce that I’ll be hosting the Crescendo Twitter Party in honor of the book’s release.

Want to join in to hear what Becca has to say?  Wanna win some fabulous prizes?  I knew you would!

Here are the deets:

Join Crescendo author Becca Fitzpatrick and me, Michelle of Galleysmith for a Twitter party Thursday, October 21, between 8:00 – 9:30 p.m. EST!

• Be sure to follow Becca @becfitzpatrick and Michelle @galleysmith before the party!
• Join the fun! No one expects you or your tweets to be perfect; we’re just happy you made it to the party!
• Watch for giveaways from @galleysmith and win awesome prizes including a new iPod nano, gift cards, jewelry and autographed books!
• To join the party, you can use a free service like TweetChat or TweetGrid or just search #Crescendo on Twitter.
• Ask Becca questions or chat with other partygoers—just use the tag #Crescendo in all of your party tweets!
• Please don’t post any spoilers and don’t forget to pay attention to the time zones, the party starts at 8:00pm EST.

Sounds like fun right?  Be sure to mark your calendars and join Becca and I for a great party!

…. ready for his blogging debut!

This weekend had my good friends Lenore and her husband Daniel visiting the Metro-DC area for a book signing at Hooray for Books.

In case you weren’t aware Daniel is the artist behind the illustrative masterpiece Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten [order it!!] authored by Audrey Vernick.  Today I was lucky enough to attend the book signing to pick up a personally illustrated and autographed copy that I’m excited to add to my collection.

Look!  Buffalo is blogging!

How cool is that?  Cool right?

Huh, not cool enough?

How about Daniel in a buffalo cap?

Yup, now *that* is definitely cool!

I really enjoyed being able to spend time with a few of my local friends (Swapna, Jenn, Deb) as well as Lenore and Daniel as he signed and personalized my book along with Audrey before she read the book aloud.

Did I mention that I walked away from the store with more than the awesome Buffalo book?  Because, you all know me, impossible to go into a bookstore without coming back out with an armful of books.  I also picked up Oh.My.Gods and The Dairy Queen for Shelby — great big thanks to everyone who has continued to give me awesome suggestions — and Bruiser for myself.

But, really, the best part of the weekend was being able to spend quality time with friends I don’t get to see often enough.  It was fabulous time spent!

Being into young adult literature as much as I am I want to share with you two exciting industry events that are starting to gear up and kick off.

Kidlitoshpere Conference

2010′s Kidlitosphere Conference is going to be held the weekend of October 23rd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  An event where children’s and young adult book bloggers, authors, publicity types and anyone at all who is interested in YA and kidlit to congregate for a few days of eating, drinking, networking and learning from each other.

I was lucky enough that last year’s conference was held right here in DC (wanna come back folks?  I’ll do the work!) and it was truly a fabulous experience.  One that I strongly encourage anyone who digs YA and kidlit to attend.  I won’t be able to make it this year and am quite bereft at not being able to hang out with all of the new friends I made.  But, I’m looking forward to following along on Twitter and reading the posts of attendees after the fact.

Wanna know another reason why I’m so bummed that I won’t be able to go this year?  The  awesome Maggie Stiefvater is keynote speaker.  She’s an excellent writer and her blog is fantastic to boot.  I can only imagine how amazing she’s going to be standing up at the podium gabbing away about it all.

The organizers are currently sifting through session proposals so the agenda isn’t publicized yet but trust me this is an event not to be missed if you can avoid it.  To register and keep tabs on all the news that’s fit to print check out the Kidlit Con 2010 blog.

Cybils Awards

The call for panelists and judges for the 2010 Cybils Awards was put out this week.   Anne Levy, organizer, details the amount of work that will go into participation, the eligibility standards, and various other details potential interested parties must be aware of before throwing his/her hat in the ring.

What are the Cybils Awards you ask?  It’s an annual award that is designed to recognize children’s and young adult literature “whose books combine the highest literary merit and “kid appeal”.  You can learn much more about it on the Cybils blog where there is a wealth of information about the awards past and present.

I’m excited to apply to participate this year, though I suspect the competition is tough.  Even if I’m not fortunate enough to be selected I can tell you you’ll be hearing all about what is going on here on my blog.

I know, I know….I’m a week (or so) later than one would expect a recap to come.  But I didn’t want to pass up on the opportunity to chat about my ALA Annual Conference experience because it was just that awesome.

The librarians sure do know how to put on a show, it was fantabulous to be in my home town and be able to run into the city for awhile and then head home to cool down.  Because, you know, it was the one week of the summer so far that being in DC was akin to being in the pits of hell — temperature wise that is.

Ok, so let me get down and dirty with the highlights.

The festivities started off with the awesome Tiffany arriving!  She was my roomie for the weekend and I was excited to have her with me.  We hung out for a bit and chatted about various books and television shows before heading out for an awesome dinner in DC.  We motored into town to meet up with Liz and Melissa at their hotel where we promptly got stuck in an elevator.  I can tell you, I was not a pretty sight — being as claustrophobic as I am, this teenie tiny elevator with no ventilation on a 100 degree day was *not* how I wanted to kick off the evening.  Think of me clawing at the doors and then multiply it by ten y’all, it was not pretty.  Good news is we got out and the ladies were good sports about my freak out (thanks girls!).  Afterwards, we headed over to Oyamel where there were alcoholic beverages imbibed and much food taken in.  But the highlight was the awesome conversation.

We didn’t stay out too late though because Friday was also set to be a really big (think long) day.

I was so blessed to have had the chance to organize a meet up with the amazing Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl of Beautiful Creatures fame.  Set to meet at a really great restaurant called Teaism a lovely group of bloggers/librarians had the opportunity to hang out and chat with the ladies about their road to publication, the differences between US and international blogging, amazing swag, and the occasional life experience.  To say that these ladies were gracious was an understatement but more than that they were HI-lar-ious!  Seriously, their combined sense of humor had me laughing my ass off.  I definitely think they should go for writing a comedy at some point.

Thanks to Tiffany for the picture I stole. Oh and check out Liz’s Team Peeta t-shirt. LOVE!!

I was scheduled to go to the Pre-Conference session titled Promoting Teen Reading with Web 2.0 Tools but was feeling a tad under the weather and knew I wanted to make the evening festivities so I sadly bowed out and took some time to relax at home.  You can catch great recaps at Cazzy Files and A Chair, A Fireplace and A Tea Cozy as well as through the hashtag for the event #yalsareading.

After browsing the opening session at the Exhibits Hall, Friday evening also had us hanging out with amazing authors, bloggers, librarians and just about anyone else you can think of at KidLit Drink Night.  RFD was *packed* solid with people boozing it up, enjoying the occasional hors d’eurves and gabbing away.  It was hot, we were exhausted, but we toughed it out for about two hours before heading home to collapse in the chilly a/c of home.  I was glad to catch up with a few friends I’d met at KidlitCon (Terry, Jennifer), see some friends I’ve met online in person (Sara, Carrie) and introduce myself some new ones (Kelly, Rebecca, Madigan).  It was a bit loud, but the Kidlit folks sure do put on a good party!

Saturday had me walking around the aforementioned exhibit hall.  I was there for a few hours and then came home to cool down and relax for a bit before heading back into town for dinner with a fabulous group of people.  Tiffany outdid herself in planning a great meet up at Austin Grill where there were about 20ish of us all torturing the poor wait staff.  Really, I kid you not, they were definitely ready for us to go when we did! LOL

In attendance were, Sarah and her husband, Kelly and her husband, Tiffany, Katie, Drea, Carrie, Harmony and her aunt, James, Stephanie Kuehnart, Jeri Smith-Ready, Holly Cupala, and Amy Brecount White.

Sunday brought with it more time in the exhibit hall, but not until after I attended the Children’s and Young Adult Book Blogs: Enhancing Library Services session.  Pam, Liz and Travis did a great job talking about the children’s and YA blogosphere and how we all have the ability to contribute to the professional and collection development (among a long list of other things) for librarians.  When I find a recap of the I’ll be sure to come back and link it up here.

I’m not going to embarrass myself with the list of stash I walked away from ALA with.  I will tell you though, that I had the intention of walking away with no more than five “must have” books.  Ummmm, yea, not so much.  I was on the receiving end of those five books and so many more!  Seriously, it’s totally embarrassing, no mortifying.  Great stuff ahead for the blog though!

If I tried to write up a summary of everything I think you all would be bored to tears, not to mention filled with loathing for having to wade through it all.  Suffice it to say I had a great time!  I met great people, saw great bloggers I’d met at BEA (I was in fact informed that I may have had this ability to just magically materialize to chat with people on the exhibition floor), and in general felt very fulfilled professionally speaking.  ALA’s conferences are something I’ll continue to keep my eye on and if I can make it I’m definitely going to add it to my list of great events to join in on.