Teen Read Week (or It's October 20th Already???)

Tip of the Day: See if your local library is doing anything special this week for Teen Read Week!

Last spring, the awesome YA librarian who founded the Rochester Teen Book Fest (omg we have Elizabeth Scott! Heather Brewer! Ally Carter! Melissa de la Cruz! Eric Luper! So many more coming in May!) had the brilliant brainstorm for the Monroe County YA Librarians to do something for Teen Read Week, like one of the "if everyone in [this area] read the same book" thingies except with a teen book. And author Terry Trueman volunteered to be our first guinea pig for the event, saying he'd come back to Rochester for the week to do library events. How freakin cool is that? (It's very cool and even more so when you've seen TT speak.)

So, in the midst of library summer reading craziness, we plotted and planned, scored a grant, and are hosting TT in a series of TRW events.

Now the tough thing about TRW is that it is in October when there are no school breaks, no holidays, nothing to alleviate the school/sports/etc. demands on teens. But does that stop the TRW and TT fever? Not for us librarians!

Despite the mediocre turnouts for the public library visits, in two days TT visited a bunch of schools, a detention center, a college, and has more coming this week. Phew! And really, a ton of people read STUCK IN NEUTRAL and CRUISE CONTROL for the events, which is what we were aiming for.

Overall, a total success. Thank you Terry and Stephanie and everyone who helped make this a great first annual Greater Rochester Teen Read for Teen Read Week!

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

Why do I have to be so BORING?

Tip of the day: Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! Hope you are spoiled rotten.

A week from today I will be in Rochester, NY for the Rochester Teen Book Festival. Or, at least, on my way to Rochester after my first ever red eye flight (by the way, if you have any tips on how to get as much sleep as possible on a red eye, I'd love to hear them). I heard today I'll be joining Barry Lyga and Robin Brande on the second flight and a kind librarian will be picking us all up and taking us to our hotel. It makes me a little sick to my stomach that they will meet me for the first time after I've been traveling all night and look like death warmed over, but oh well, what can I do?

Anyway, this week I've been working on the presentation I'll be giving three times during the day of the festival. And it's hard, because I don't have any cool background stories for my books, or anything funny I can share about growing up, or horror stories about how much I hated high school (I actually loved high school. Go figure).

So, what in the heck do I talk about for 50 minutes? I decided to tackle some of the "why" questions I get a lot from readers. Why do I write in verse? Why are my books about death? Why do I write, period?

I'm really afraid it's going to be BORING! Quick, tell me some funny stories I can throw in there to liven things up. Who cares if they're not mine, no one will know, right??

Please. I need some funny. Help!!

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career