Amy Ignatow is blogging for us as she and her husband, Mark, tour for her debut book, The Popularity Papers: Research for the Social Improvement and General Betterment of Lydia Goldblatt & Julie Graham-Chang (Amulet/Abrams). Her previous post is here.
Indianapolis was great. We checked into a nice hotel, saw a
minor league baseball game at Victory Field and met the greatest reader ever
at Kids Ink, this girl named Carolyn who excitedly informed me that she'd read The Popularity Papers SIX TIMES. If she
thought it was a thrill to meet me, she had no idea what it meant for me to
meet her. SIX TIMES. She was hoping to read it 10 times. When I told her that
there was a sequel on the way, her mouth literally dropped open. I am the
luckiest author in the whole world.
We left Indianapolis at around five and drove to Terre Haute to spend the night. The plan was to have a leisurely morning, drive to St. Louis, see some sort of fire-breathing metal dragon on the way (thank you, Roadside America), go to the top of the St. Louis arch and poke around the city until it was time to meet up with the Pudd'nHead Books people at the library at 6ish.
That was the plan, anyway.
At 12:15 that night I got a text. It's sort of a miracle that I was even awake to hear the buzz, but Mark was listening to the 16th inning of a Phillies game on his computer, and I was immersed in my brand spankin' new copy of Mockingjay.
Amy--Melissa from Pudd'nHead Books. Are you ok with your directions for your two school visits tomorrow morning? Sorry for the late text!
WHAT? WHAT? MORNING WHAT?????
Back when we were planning this trip there had been some talk of school visits, but due to some sort of e-mailing/confirming/Hand of Loki, the Trickster God snafu, it had never made it onto our schedule, and we were in a hotel in Terre Haute at midnight, three hours away from St. Louis with a school visit at nine the next morning. After some extreme panicking on my part and some calm, level-headed decision-making on Mark's, I called Melissa and told her that we'd be there. Tired, but there.
Oh Amy, you say, you could have slept a solid five hours before hitting the road to St. Louis. Well you try sleeping after reading Mockingjay for three hours and then suffering a massive panic attack. I didn't sleep a wink. All I could think about was How I could have not double-checked my events, Was Peeta going to be okay, and OH MY GOD I'M NOT FALLING ASLEEP I'M GOING TO COLLAPSE IN FRONT OF 200 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KIDS. I was a mess.
But here's what's wonderful: driving from Terre Haute to St. Louis in the wee hours--the roads are clear, the moon in the night sky is huge and beautiful, and you get to watch the sun come up over the Mississippi River.
The school programs went really well--the kids had a good time and Melissa sold a pile of books. Put me in front of a heap of kids, and I'm good. Later, after Mark and I had oohed and ahhed at the view from the top of the St. Louis Arch, we sat down to watch a 1960s film on how the arch was made and I passed out. Now I'll never know how they made that thing.
We'd survived most of the day--all that was left was the
evening event. As we walked up to the St. Louis County Library, Melissa and
Nikki from Pudd'nHead were waiting at the front door with a young, dark-haired
man--my literary agent from New York, Dan Lazar. For a moment I was convinced
that the fatigue had gotten to me and I was just stone cold hallucinatin'. It
was like seeing Batman make an appearance on Scooby Doo. But it was really him.
He was visiting with his Pudd'nHead friends and had planned the trip around my
appearance (at right: Dan, Amy and Melissa).
Am I not the luckiest author in the whole world?
After the library event we bid a fond farewell to Dan and the awesome Pudd'nHead ladies and headed north to visit friends in Des Moines. Then we went on to Omaha to do an event at Bookworm and discover what a real Omaha hamburger will do to intestines that haven't encountered red meat since the mid 1990s (nothing good). Right now we've just crossed into the Mountain Time Zone, Denver-bound. Every 20 or so miles, Mark will turn to me and say, "Look, corn!"
Ignatow is posting more about her travels here.