The short version of the past three days:
- The Humble Teen Lit Festival was unbelievably wonderful and run by the awesomest group of librarians and teachers ever. Thanks for taking such great care of me, Dawn!
- The Humble students and the other folks who showed up were smart and receptive and asked lots of questions I hadn’t been asked before. Fabulous!
- My old man is insanely popular. I mean I knew he was popular, but I didn’t realise he was that popular. I thought I was going to burst I was so proud of him. You shoulda seen his signing queue! Around the block! Mental!
- Scott’s family are lovely. Catching up with Uncle Ronnie the principal (and wow do his students love him) and Jackie and Ken would have made the trip totally worthwhile without the added bonus of Teen Lit Festival.
- All writers obsess about their character’s shrugging or smiling or raising eyebrows too much.
- Apparently there are two airports in Houston. Ooops.
- Getting from one to the other is a seventy dollar cab ride.
- Way too many of you lot are deeply deluded about vampires. It saddens me.
- None of you knows about Scott Pilgrim?! This causes me great pain. Go out and read the three volumes immediately! That’s an order.
- Although I feared three days without my computer it turned out to be way more of a blessing than a curse. I may now take a couple of days off from its evil thrall once a week. Or monthly. Or possibly every six months . . .
- It was still lovely to come home to all your mail and comments here. Bless!
And now I go pass out. While being other places is wondrousness, getting to and from them is increasingly horrible. It took us fourteen hours to get from Houston to NYC. That’s how long it takes to get from LA to Sydney . . . That ain’t right.
eyebrows! gotta remember that one.
also, I have a hell of a time describng different kinds of smiles. I think someone needs to put out a collection of famous literary smiles, with illustrations.
That’s a brilliant idea! Though I’d expand it to the book of famous literary gestures and expression so we’d get the whole farmyard of tics and grimaces.
yay! you are so awesome. 🙂 i just got through writing 4000 words about last weekend. i think that’s more than i’ve written all at once since nanowrimo. hehe. 😀 it’s true, blogging is taking over my life.
14 hours? sounds horrible. how long does it normally take? i’ve never flown. *sigh*
i must say i’m surprised you don’t like vampires. they are quite similar to zombies in many ways….
Was lovely meeting you, Rebecca!
A direct flight would only be about three and a half hours.
Vampires are supposed to be sexy; zombies are not. The idea of walking dead people being sexy grosses me out more than I can say.
i s’pose i see your point. but i’ve never liked the idea that vampires had to be dead, either. i know traditionally they are, but they don’t have to be. hehe.
three and half hours? that’s it? that’s insane. i could get to el paso in about thirty minutes on a plane. that’s a hell of a lot better than seven hours in a car. unless it turns into 14 hours, that is.
It was very very annoying. But, you know, there was one guy (a soldier) also stuck in Chicago and he’d travelled from Iraq to Kuwait to Germany to England to Chicago and was waiting to get to Orlando. So he was way worse off than us.
I read your posts on the lit fest. They’re lovely!
If vampires aren’t dead then they’re just psychos with a blood-drinking complex. Ewwww!
eep. perhaps flying is not so much fun after all.
thanks! 😀
psychotic human mosquitoes = conflict, mwahahahahaha!! i take it you’re not a big buffy fan.
You would be wrong.
Flying is just fine once you’re up in the air . . .
I’m so sad that I didn’t get to see you and Scott this past weekend…I had too much up to do here with production that my college is putting on to drive that many hours to Texas. Though, I don’t think I’m deluded at ALL about vampires. Even genius writers like yourself couldn’t sway me on that one. I don’t know what I’d do without a computer for three days…or my cell phone, for that matter. I left it at home one day last week, and I felt so completely lost without it. Now THAT’s sad. Not vampires. 🙂
What would you do if you had to choose between your phone and vampires? 🙂
I can’t tell you how much I loved not having my computer for a few days. Freedom!
wow. i stand corrected. although i think you should add “Passion” to tragic buffy festival. that one had me wailing.
My pet hate is when authors make their characters grin too much. I love Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series but after book 2 she starts using characters’ grins as punctuation, like the period on a sentence or the resolution of a chord. And it just doesn’t resolve anything for me. One thing I really like about your writing, Justine, is that you tend not to get stuck on a single word like that. Your words fan out like a peacock’s tail. (This is getting a little overwritten but hey–it’s praise.)
p.s. thanks for writing about your childhood in the bush. i loved that story.
Ariel Cooke: Don’t blame the writer! Blame her editors and copyeditors for letting that slip through. If I don’t seem to get stuck on particular words that’s on account of the goodness of my editors’ powers of deletion.
“No, Justine!” they cry. “You can’t use ‘pellucid’ fifty-six times in the one chapter. And if Reason grimaces one more time we will kill her. And Tom better quit tugging his hair. As for Jay-Tee. See our notes. But in short: all twitches must go!”
PS Thanks for the kind words!
Ahhem…dear readers…do not let Justine mislead you…WE were the ones who had a great time. I became a googly 13-year-old, getting to hang out with her all day. The two sessions she conducted were well-attended. I know the audiences loved her conversational style, rather than listening to a droning speech about the benefits of blue versus black ink when authoring. At my school, her works are equally popular as Mr. Larbalestier’s.:)
We did muse about the oxymoron of “Humble, Texas.”
I am glad I was set straight about the eccentricities of creatures of the fantasy realm.
Don’t forget your homework: find a video clip of “Justine, Justine” from the Cosby show.:)
Justine…thanks so much for coming and you were even more delightful than I had imagined. I am BUMMED that I had to leave early and couldn’t go with y’all after!
dawn:)
Hi there Justine! Was great sitting in your session at the Lit Fest! You’re a very interesting woman and although I must admit I have not read your books I’m very interested and will pick up some copies as soon as humanly possible! Thank you for coming to the festival and hah! Houston can be a very confusing place I know :P. Hopefully though you’ll return!
Hey!
Well, so right it is March…and this blog was put up in February. I do believe I am a little late…
Well, I was there in Humble at the Teen Lit. Festival and I must say, you were AMAZING! AWESOME! OUTSTANDING! — and any other words that go along the lines of those three. I was there in your first session and was the one that was questioning you all the way until lunch. Sorry ’bout that…-nervous laugh-
Also, I am terribly sorry for commenting this in March and not February…I got caught up in reading and homework and I couldn’t find this site. Even though the site is your name…>.