Good god, you'd think I'd be better at titles by now.
May 14th 2019 Friday : Toronto Trip Day 1
I'm currently writing this at a later date, from a cabin on Mt. Washington, on a writer's retreat with the coven (writer's group). We slept in this morning, which was great, because I can't remember the last time I slept in (the smol child doesn't allow it).
I've already written 2k words and consumed roughly two pots of tea and half a chocolate bar, so it's been good so far. This month has been a bit of a madhouse, since I was just in Toronto for the Forest of Reading festival from the 14th to the 16th. The Forest of Reading was the absolute coolest thing to be a part of, basically it's a conference center absolutely FULL of kids who love books, and because the Ontario Library Association chose The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray as one of the Red Maple Nominations, a lot of these kids had read it, so it was really neat to get to meet them.
Friday was the insanely busy day. I pretty much got there at nine, ate breakfast in the green room (the room at the back for authors, which had a solid stock of bagels and yogurt, thank god) and went to the ceremony at the big stage out front. I had an absolutely lovely handler named Ashley, who helped me get from place to place all day, and without her I would have been totally and completely lost (I have no sense of direction and regularly get lost in places like my local mall, yikes).
The ceremony was super amazing. I got to meet two of the students, one who was holding a giant sign of the Bryony Gray book cover (So cool!) and one who was going to introduce me on stage. My sign holder was as cool and calm as a cucumber but me and my presenter were both pretty nervous (though I babbled a lot more nervously than she did and probably made a fool of myself back stage).
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We waited backstage in a huge line up with all the authors, and then the announcer called us on stage and it was go time! The audience was huge!! It was a bit intimidating, but I managed to actually keep it together enough to say a few words, and told them about the time my parents tried to ban me from reading Harry Potter, so I read them under my sheets with a flash light, Harry Potter style. And how my mom tried to get me to stop reading so much fantasy at one point (she probably had a point as I was running around in elvish cloaks and such) and so I turned around and became a fantasy writer.
The speech went over pretty well I thought, and the announcer did a fun call and response after (When I say Harry, you say Potter). So the whole thing was super amazing. I didn't win the Red Maple but being a nominee was just a tremendously cool experience and the readers were SO enthusiastic it made me so happy to see people who love books so much.
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After the ceremony was over it was straight to the signing booth, but I lost my handler for a bit, and she had my purse with all my signing pens in it! So I was a bit panicky there, and went to the back of the stage to try to find her. Then, because I happen to have bright blue hair at the moment, I'm super hard to miss, so I got sidetracked by loads of people wanting autographs, which was so surreal and cool and exciting, but I knew I was going to be late for the signing if I didn't get over there (it was across the lawn, on the other side of the festival), and there were already people lined up waiting.
I managed to extract myself, though I felt a bit bad about it, but I told the readers that I'd be signing over at the booth and to come see me there. So I ran all the way over and found another volunteer who let me borrow a couple of pens, and also got one from another author, so I had 3 black sharpies (every signing I've ever done, I've ended up running out of ink mid-signing, just because that's my luck of course).
The signing was AMAZING. There were so many awesome kids who had read the book, and a few of them asked if Bryony and Mira were a "thing" and when I confirmed they were REALLY excited, which made my heart feel all warm and fuzzy, haha. Loads of them came with their own copies, or their school library copies, and seeing the long line up was so amazing and unreal and it felt like a dream.
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Lots asked for pictures, and I was so pumped that I was just constantly grinning really huge, so I'm sure there are now quite a few pictures out in the world of me posing with these kids and just grinning like some kind of blue-haired lunatic.
After the signing, I was making my way back to the green room and one of the girls I'd met at the signing ran after me and asked for another hug, which I'm pretty sure made my entire day.
After all this I was pretty much exhausted, and I spent most of the rest of the festival in the green room talking with the other authors. Also, Kellie, my wonderful Word Nerd fellow vlogger, happens to live in Toronto, so she met me at the festival. As you can see, we pose super well and are extremely photogenic.
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She and another author friend, Shari and I went and got dinner at the Brewhouse just down the street from our hotel that night, and our waitress happened to be from Ireland, which was really cool. I got to ask her exactly what the Irish police are called (the garda, apparently, never cops) because it's something I've been looking into for Witches of Ash and Ruin. I also told her about the book and that it comes out in 2020 from Disney, Hyperion, and she said she'd look out for it. She was lovely, and her accent was super cool (and yes, I tipped well after asking her a billion questions, in case you're wondering).
After dinner, the three of us went back to the hotel and wrote in the lobby. Kellie and I tried to take some selfies and we are apparently bad at it, because they were all terrible, or maybe because we are terrible? We posted some anyway.
Kellie helped me a LOT with brainstorming on the Emmaline Black manuscript, because I'd been really stuck up until then, but I ended up with an entire plot outline by the end of the night. Thank god for writer friends!
