Libba Bray & Shannon Hale- RECAP

The next event in our week long series. On February 5, 2008, the following Epic day occurred:

It all began when I was stressed... lol I got out of school; got everything we needed from my house (my paranoia made me keep thinking I was forgetting things, this is a common occurrence). Finally my mom and I left, and went to pick up Julie's costume. But it took forever to get out of there! There were four people helping us... all could barely speak English...
(I need to add here that while this was going on I was sitting outside of Michael's making earrings, and getting asked by every other person that passed by how to get to JC Penny's.)

Then, we went to pick up Lorena from the metro rail station where she kind of had to wait for a couple hours... though at least at first there were people there with her. (I took the time to discover that Subway sells pizza.) Then, we went to pick up Julie from school. We sat most of the car ride looking through my jewelry box for the pure metal necklaces and bracelets. (Some were made of resign which just isn't as cool.)

Oh yeah...We're such nerdy fanatics that we ended up creating jewelry for the event. I sculpted Gemma Doyle's pendant. And in a struggle trying to figure out what to make, Erika and I created charm bracelets with key items from Hale's Book of a Thousand Days to hand out as prizes at the event. Select few got the kickass metal ones but we were short of suppiles so only about 6 of those were made. The rest were resign.

We went to Books & Books, parked, and went to eat a few blocks down. We went back to the bookstore and brought our load of stuff with us. We got dressed in our costumes and then my mom left at 4:30 because she had to go to a meeting.

We finished getting ready and then sat at this small table in the children's area and waited. Staff would walk near us and went into the door we were right next to, always looking at us questioningly. Julie said this one guy almost ran into the door. LOL

So, we waited and then it was about 5:30 and Emily came and we began setting up the room it was going to be in... pushing the bookshelves to the side and making rows of chairs.

Then, we put out the "Hello my name is..." tags I made to write anagrams on, along with the necklaces and bracelets we made...

We handed out raffle tickets as people entered... and just stood there looking funny in our costumes. (Sometime during this my parents arrived with Brigitte, whom I forced to help.)

A few of my friends came, and other people... and then Emily came and asked if we wanted to give up our duties for a few minutes because the authors had arrived... Um... Of course!

So, we went over to the kids area and saw Libba and Shannon, they LOVED our costumes and took pictures with us. Shannon asked if it would be okay to post the picture on her blog.

Then, they saw our necklaces and bracelets (Shannon took a picture of my hand next to my chest so she could get both...) Libba asked if I ever thought I would be a hand model. LOL Libba hugged us and that's as much as I can remember... It was amazing!

Then ,we went back to the room, sat in the first row since we were VIPs. :D And waited for it to begin. Emily introduced the authors, and they came out. They both had on a hand puppet they had found in the children's section and were playing with them. The cookiemonster was eaten by the ice cream carton.

They asked each other questions and were hilarious! Then, they asked the crowd to ask them a few questions and answered them. Brigitte eventually got the nerve to ask if she could do the Time Warp so Libba, Shannon, Brigitte, and I all started doing it together...my hat fell on more than one ocassion. Then tried to sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and called up some of the crowd to be backup dancers. But there were alot of little girls that didn't know it so it sounded like something along the lines of, "Uhhh munble mumble I don't know the words".

Emily then introduced us, (Julie, Lorena, Brigitte, and me) We asked the trivia contest questions, giving out the bracelets and necklaces we made, then a raffle for books or necklaces and bracelets... People kept yelling at me to speak louder.

Then, we presented our stuffed animal cats to them, Mr. Bubbles Kitty (relating to her blog) for Libba and My Lord (a cat in her book) for Shannon. They adored them!

-Waiting scene for the line to quiet down-

Then, the line finally calmed down, and we got in and waited... We were trying to be last. They signed all our books, and they didn't just sign them, but wrote a paragraph in each (possibly an exaggeration, but it was quite long). lol And I had A LOT of books (I think we both had an average of 7-8 books)... Libba thanked us over and over, asked how we made the necklaces...Before we left I took it upon myself to make sure Libba and Shannon both had metal versions of the jewelery. Shannon did, but Libba had a resign one, so I gave up mine...I really liked it too.

Emily let me keep the event poster, so they both graffiti-ed the other's photo and signed the poster... I'm going to hang it in my room. Lol

And that's about it... we took photos with them again, and then left...

-Erika (with comments by Lorena in red)