The Great American ALA Tour Part 2

I'm now back in my room at the Boston Marriott after having an amazing sushi dinner with my editor and a couple of wonderful people who work at Publisher's Group West, the company that distributes my publisher's books in the U.S. Wow. What a day.

It all started with a problem-free drive from Albany til Boston. Well, it was problem-free until I hit the city. If you know anything about my navigational skills, you'll know that I have none. I've gotten lost coming home from Square One, a mall in my own city. My nav skills are so bad, I get lost following a GPS. And I did. Like three times. And it doesn't help when there's a tunnel in the middle of the city that you have to go through and you've missed hearing the GPS's directions before you went in. And then even the second time, when you pay attention to the directions and get it right, you can't get a satellite feed inside the tunnel and it's not just a straight through tunnel. It's like a maze. Well, to a first timer it's like a maze. So you come out in the wrong spot yet again. And then your GPS has you do, like, three u-turns (all of which you miss doing because you're not allowed to do u-turns in Canada and don't realize this is what you're being told to do)

Anyway, we somehow, miraculously, made it to the hotel in one piece and with a few nerves left intact. Luckily, the next 7.5 hours went from awesome to awesomer: I met my editor for the first time ever, we went to the exhibition hall where I signed and gave away about 150 books, and then - as I said at the beginning of this post - I had an amazing sushi dinner with three fabulous people. I also met a few fellow Twitterers in real life.

Tomorrow I hope to have some pics to add to Part 3 of the Great American ALA Tour. My camera battery died just as I got to the exhibition hall and was about to take my first picture of the Simply Read booth. Harumph!

So now it's off to bed I go. It's midnight and I've got a 7:45 am meeting with my editor. (who, by the way, is even more awesome in person. she's an absolute doll) And then at 9 am it's back to the exhibition hall to sign and give away more books! Yay! I'm loving it!

I'm one of the lucky people in Boston tonight.

Good night all.