NYC & BEA Day 1

I landed in New York City last night (though I had the usual leaving O'Hare and arriving at La Guardia delays, my flight was fine) and my agent and her lovely husband brought me back to their place. I spent the night surrounded by books. Soooooo many books. Books that I've been dying to buy for myself. It was hard to sleep. I seriously pondered skipping all of my plans and just holing up to read.

And look at all of those copies of my books that she will use to try to sell foreign and film rights. Cross your fingers!

I painted my nails green just for this trip (Okay my fingers aren't crossed in this photo, but I am wearing my lucky stars tights). I'm thinking ALA will be blue...

Today I've been planning my schedule for the next few days. So much to see! Too little time!

I'm at the Teen Author Carnival in a few hours. It runs from 5 to 8 pm at the Jefferson Market Branch Library, 425 Avenue of the Americas in NYC. You can check out the panel and other information here. I'll be on the real teen life panel, which definitely suits what I write about. There are three panels and you have time to see them all and then come to the autographing session where I will be signing out books, handing out swag and Lemonheads candy fresh from the factory in my home town!

Afterwards I get to hang with some of the authors and librarians before heading back to my agent's place and trying to sleep among all those books.

Tomorrow's plan is to get my BEA (Book Expo America) badge, have lunch with a high school friend and then bum around til the Class of 2K10 reading at Books of Wonder (18 W. 18th St) at 6 pm. I'm so excited to see my pal Jeri Smith-Ready and meet the other tenners!

I'm going to try to get up and blog about the carnival before I head out tomorrow. This getting up early thing.... I have to get up at 6 am on Wednesday and Thursday for BEA. That is equal to 5 am my time. And I usually go to bed at 3 am. Yikes! Last night I forced myself to go to bed around 1 am (midnight my time) and get up at 8:30 am. Tomorrow I'm aiming for 7:30 to get myself used to this. I have to take ambien in order to sleep. Sleeping in a strange place throws me for a loop anyway, but obviously going to bed/getting up wayyyyy early does a number too. Hopefully this doesn't mess me up too much when I get home because I'd finally gotten that insomnia mostly under control.

Anyway, sleep rant aside, I am sooooooo pumped to be here. I can't wait to devour all the literary energy. I will blog whenever I can (like I said hopefully tomorrow morning), but since both Weds and Thursday will be such looooooooooong days, I probably won't get a chance, however, I'll definitely keep a live feed from BEA and all my events and NYC craziness going on my twitter, so be sure to check that out!