Sunday Slobber: My Trip to the Decatur Book Festival!

*Disclaimer: The reason this post goes under "Sunday Slobber" is it was supposed to happen yesterday, but blogger was being a $%#&*, so I had to wait to post until this morning.

So, I actually dehermitized yesterday, got out of the ol' writing chair for something besides teaching, to head down to the Decatur Book Festival. For those of you unfamiliar with DBF, which until this year included myself, lol, it is the largest independent book festival in the nation. It's a hodge-podge of genres and authors getting together to talk about writing. Best part: it's FREE! I had all good intentions of attending both days. However, the migraine from hades attacked me at 6am this morning, so I didn't quite make it.

I was so thrilled to get to do something again with Regan. We had an awesome time last January at our Writer's Weekend in Gatlinburg. Saturday dawned a gorgeous pre-fall day. It was a cloudless sky with a slight breeze--a thankful respite from the usual heinous Georgia humidity and heat. I met Regan for lunch at Mary Mac's Team Room--I'd never been before, and it was AWESOME! I'd highly recommend it for great Southern food, plus it is quite the celebrity hotspot. Then we headed on to the festival. Decatur is just over the Fulton County/Atlanta border.



Here's some quick facts I learned! (Props to Myra McEntire and Heather Tresse since my phone died partway through, and I'm borrowing some of their tweets! Was sooo excited to me the awesomely lovely and funny Myra McEntire! You need to mark Hourglass to read come this May! It will be teh bomb! Bummed that Heather and I were in the same room, yet we didn't manage to say hello. Argh!

Here's Alyxandra Harvey and Carrie Ryan during the Vampire Vs. Zombie smackdown!

The Method Behind the Magic panel with Saundra Mitchell, Jessica Verday, Cinda Williams Chima and Kathleen Duey.

*Colored streaks seem to be the hip thing with YA Writer's. Blue, pink, purple, green--very cool. I will have to contemplate this fact if and when I get a deal. It would be purple since purple is my favorite color. I don't suppose the cinnamon low lites I get during the winter months actually count...hmm....

*Alyxandra Harvey and I could be twins. She doesn't outline, and she doesn't like to listen to music with lyrics while writing. That's SO me.



Here's Rachel Hawkins and Nancy Werlin during the panel.

















*The guy who lead the Zombie vs. Vampire smackdown with Carrie Ryan and Alyxandra Harvey was HILARIOUS! I love how he had us answer prozombie or provampire with either zombie groans or vampire hisses! LOL

*I ducked out at the start of the Hawkins/Werlin panel to run down to Decatur High where my cousin, former Georgia Poet Laureate, David Bottoms, was on a panel of poets. I got to hear him for a bit and then run down to the end of the stage to say a quick hello since I needed to get back to the YA panel instead of his signing. *I have several of his books of poetry and his novel signed anyway, lol*


*Nancy Werlin, author of Impossible and Extraordinary, suggests that a book cover doesn't have to have anything to do with your book. It just has to make people pick it up. She showed us the two different covers for Impossible, and we automatically gravitated towards the one with more color and a mysterious girl on the cover rather than a white washed one.



*Carrie Ryan was a Debutante back in the day, and she also worked at the Coroner's Office. So, she's got real life experience describe Zombie bones poking out and all, lol. She also wrote Forest of Hands and Teeth for NaNo month.


*I made somewhat of a goof when meeting the very funny, awesome, and approachable Rachel Hawkins of Hex Hall. I thought she was the person that Myra had been looking for in the room(we were tweeting to each other), and I made a "And you are?" loser faux paus. She was very nice about it tho. :)




*Per Rachel Hawkins: Covers matter--especially when they put a cat on yours, and there's no cat in the book. She has since revisited her cat stance, and there is a cat being introduced into book three since so many people have written to her about the cat! We all had a laugh imagining people writing fan fiction about the cat.


*Jessica Verday suggests building a book bible when coming up with your fantasy world. It helps to keep yourself in check and remember what you need to about your world.


*Kathleen Duey's advice on writing fantasy is to STRETCH!


*Saundra Mitchell says with fantasy that she makes it up as she goes along, but she does stop and check in with reality as she goes along! lOL




Anyway, it was so awesome, and I wish I had gotten to see Cassie Clare, Michelle Zink, and Jackson Pearce on Sunday. Bummer!