what’s a gal to do when meeting her favorite author*person? besides shake and cry on the sidewalk and forget all the sixteen questions she wrote down ahead of time for an intellectual conversation with the person whose career she’s been following ever since his first book came out? well, all of that, i guess. AND pack a friend to take pictures because i could barely make sense of anything.

soman was SO nice. i don’t think i ever finished a complete sentence. i think i started with “sorry, i’m really nervous. i’m a really big fan.” and he did the celebrity I’ve-seen-this-before-because-i’m-a-famous-author-person thing and asked if i wanted him to sign my book. and asked my name.

soman: “h-a-l-l-i-e?”

me: yes! good job!

soman: [signing the title page] have you read this?

me: yeah, it’s a first edition, man.

[soman signs my book, then flips to the copyright page to confirm.]

me: had i known it was gonna be seven books…

[i was gonna make a comment about i should have bought the hardcover, but i lost all ability to speak i was shaking so hard.]

me: could you also sign this? [hands him a nice scrap of drawing paper i brought from home] i’m an artist [meant to say i wanted to frame it for my studio]… maybe with a quote from the books?

soman: oh, man… uh…

me: if you don’t have one, i thought maybe “it’s never too late in a fairy tale.” [hort, from book three, which i had just recently re-listened too on audio.]

soman: oh, that’s a good one!

aaaand i remember nothing else of the conversation, except my friend haley, bless her, took our picture.

behold: a VERY happy book nerd meeting a VERY awesome author of one of her favorite book series: *the school for good and evil*. and most recently, *BEASTS & BEAUTY* of which i did nearly a dozen pieces of fan art for for inktober 2021!

….aaand died a little when i saw THIS message in my DMs when haley & i were eating dinner on king street….!

soman’s signature {& my name!!} in my first edition paperback, circa 2014; now one of my most valuable possessions! (and i took the quiz online, and i’m 77% good, thank you very much!) ;)

ooooh, happy day. currently being framed. {yes, those are a few of my faerie tale shelves behind me in my home studio!} #faerietalehoarder for sure! :)

so after my soman encounter (so grateful we made it across the state to charleston in time for his friday signing; it would have been well nigh impossible amongst the cROwDS and lines on saturday, i’m sure!!), i’m shaking and basically crying on the sidewalk because i FINALLY got to meet him and that just happened, and ohmghee, i just met soman chainani!! … and ransom riggs and tahereh mafi and adam silvera just causally walk by us and go into kudu (the coffee shop) so haley goes “uh, we need coffee.” which, obviously, we did.

so one cold brew for haley and one oat milk cappuccino for me, and i calm down a little. and we pretended not to stare at three of the most famous YA authors ever: just totally casually standing there in front of us dressed like hollywood gods straight out of vanity fair and an annie leibovitz film shoot. i knew they knew who they were. they probably knew we knew, too. but no one said anything. {did we do it right?}

haley & i then went bookshopping at blue bicycle (the indie bookstore who’s sponsored y’all fest for the past ten years!), and then back to our hotel in north charleston. (everything downtown’s been booked for weeks; but don’t worry: we scouted which fancy hotel to stay at once we’re famous, too!!) ;)

that night haley & i did the cool nerd thing of studying the y’all fest schedule i’d printed out the week before and studying the newsprint schedule we’d picked up in town, too. WHICH eased my booknerd heart because saturday turned out to be pretty wild…

i’d been under the impression that attendance would be down from other years just because of covid travel things and the vaccine and mask mandate…. but! i think everybody and their dads came, too. ;D so with detailed schedules of panels and events and our designated coffee breaks written down (yes, i of course packed a clipboard)… we slept and anticipated the day ahead. (me waking up at three a.m. for nerves’ sake! i thought after meeting soman i’d be more at ease; but i still needed to be cool enough in front of him that he’d see that we could be friends in real life. spoiler alert: didn’t happen this trip. but here’s to next time!) ;D

saturday morning started with a keynote from **emily lockhart** (author of *we were liars*) and **adam silvera** (*they both die at the end, infinity son*) in the charleston music hall. and then haley and i stayed for this first panel: **the next star wars** with (from left to right) **victoria aveyard**, **jordan ifueko**, **marie lu**, and **ransom riggs**.

i stayed for the next panel in the music hall, too: **from fairy tale to fairyverse** with (from left to right): **jen calonita**, **melissa de la cruz**, **elizabeth lim**, and (!my future friend!) **soman chainani**. would i have liked to moderate this panel? oh, absolutely. could i have “knocked it outta the park” as the sports people say? double absolutely. will i listen to four best*selling authors talk about fairy tales all day no matter who’s asking the questions if i have to? yes, please!

panel three in the american theatre ballroom: **plotting a best-selling novel**, moderated by (!!) **soman chainani.** with authors (from left to right) **nandini bajpai**, **tasha bhuiyan**, **ayana gray**, and **elizabeth lim**! so fun conversation about their own personal author habits and quirks. and holding out hope (someone out there needs *your* book!) because if you do it once, you can do it again! even if (& it shall) the process for writing each book changes, you’ve got an agent and a publishing team behind you, and deadlines can be a powerful motivator!

haley and i took a quick lunch break (mediocre tacos; le sob; i know you can do better, charleston!) and then i ran across the street to get in line for **elizabeth lim**…. so here’s me near the end of the line at 2:50— definitely in time for elizabeth’s 3pm signing in the courtyard, BUT! BUT! so. many. fans!! a y’all fest volunteer came by every ten minutes hollering at us that “you are not guaranteed a signing! we’ve stopped doing posed photos with elizabeth, but she has to leave at 4pm! you are not guaranteed a signing!” i didn’t let it scare me away. i was there to see elizabeth! (i’ve also made fan art of her most recent SIX CRIMSON CRANES; one of my top five books of 2021; so i wasn’t going anywhere! and i’d told her on instagram i was coming to meet her this weekend!) so we, the faithful, patient fans inch ever closer… 3:40 and the back of the line is still not within reaching distance of the tent… but i hold out hope… and we get in the tent… and elizabeth is twelve feet in front of me… and hollering volunteer says to the kid waiting in front of me “we’re cutting the line off here. you don’t get to meet the author. please go join another line elsewhere or find a panel you want to attend.” well, i stayed. for four more minutes. AND i got to meet elizabeth anyway! huzzah!

moral: hold your ground. hold out hope. just stay in line. ;) i had my book open to the signing page and handed elizabeth my new author/illustrator business card with my *SIX CRIMSON CRANES* fan art on it. she DID recognize me from our chats/postings/messages online. and while it was less than 30 seconds to say “hi,” i at least got to meet her! and she signed my new cinderella book, *SO THIS IS LOVE!* :D

something i hadn’t quite realized was that ALL the people i’d been talking to online (“see you at y’all fest!” “can’t wait to meet you!”) were no where to be found! i mean, there were just people everywhere, and about six panels happening simultaneously and another seven or twenty signings around the same few blocks at any given time slot… so i bought pre-signed LUCK OF THE TITANIC (by **stacey lee**; who i did walk past on the sidewalk, but didn’t interrupt!) and SKYHUNTER (by **marie lu**; who i saw on panels, but never got to meet personally.)
the other weird thing about y’all fest is you HAVE TO PICK who you’re going to meet. even if there’s 6 authors at the table, and you get to the head of the line, you only got to talk to the one you were in line for. do i know how to fix this? not exactly. but i wish the decisions weren’t so very difficult. but: there’s always more coffee.

so before the closing keynote and smackdown, it was back to kudu (and running up the four flights of stairs in the parking garage to unload our bookhaul for the day) and then back to charleston music hall... exhausted and happy and overwhelmed at all the bookish people out & about!

here’s a fall*tastic pic of me and haley, my loyal, bookish wing woman for the weekend. she’s absolutely allowed to join my entourage once my own name is in the y’all fest program and we’re staying at the bennet instead of the holiday inn express. ;)

**the closing keynote! nicola yoon** was the only one missing from this lineup of amazing black women authors who recently collaborated on blackout. from left to right: **ashley woodfolk**, **nic stone**, **dhonielle clayton**, **tiffany d. jackson**, and **angie thomas**. so much beauty and empowerment all in one place! they told the story of how the collaboration came together, about writing something happy and escapist in the midst of a pandemic and all the crises that were 2020—especially for BIPOC. and angie thomas articulated one big, beautiful statement: no matter what publishers may say, **there IS room for more than one black woman at the top of the bestseller lists**. it doesn’t have to be a competition. and they all agreed: **black girls and boys all deserve their own love stories**. (*blackout* is also being developed by “uncle barak’s” and “auntie michelle’s” (yes, the obamas!!) production company both as a movie and as a tv show! yay!

and then…… **THE SMACKDOWN**! hosted by (!!) **soman** and **brendan reichs**, it opened (as per tradition) with a dance montage. (see THIS post on soman’s instagram for some highlights; i was taking it all in and took no more pictures after this one!) ;)
needless to say, i’d been following soman and **jun**’s dance rehearsals in NYC for weeks. and YES, i want to be the kind of author celebrity who hires a choreographer to choreograph a six minute dance number inspired by “bad ships” for me to perform in front of 500 people who all know who kaz breaker is. ;D it was a beautiful thing. and i call that paying it forward in the arts! ;D (there was even a special video guest appearance by **kit young** of *shadow & bone* fame and the forthcoming *school for good and evil* netflix film!)
so hilarity and awkwardness ensued for the duration of the program. and thankfully none of that forced summer camp participation when your deer-in-headlights eyes are at their widest and most fearful; they took audience *volunteers*, and mostly fellow author peeps for said book-inspired games and charades chaos. :)
after it was over, i was still hoping to be brave enough to see people i knew. i did wait for the crowds to clear a bit, and dared to approach the indefatigable **kristin dwyer** (author of *some mistakes were made*, coming april 2022)! she was extrovert-kind enough to introduce me to all of her famous author posse who i feel like i know from instagram—so i got to at least wave to the lovely asheville authors: **adrienne young**, **isabel ibañez**, and **adalyn grace** behind my minnie mouse mask. :)
i also tried to duck out of the way (and eventually scurried past when they were re*setting) **stephanie garber** taking a photo with a fan. so i saw *her*. and was SO close; but again, didn’t interrupt because i’m a weanie nerd whose heart had already been beating way too fast for two full days of celebrity author sightings.

aaaand then it was over. woke up at 4am sunday morning (bah!) and journaled for a couple hours about my fears and *feeeeeeelings* about the weekend. and then haley and i ducked into a coffee shop for a few hours where i made **NaNoWriMo** progress and she graded papers… and then we were home to “reality” in greenville and it felt like even more of a blur since we were only gone ONE full day, but so much happened!

the take*away? i’m ready for the other side of the signing table.

^my first author headshot. do i have an agent? no. do i have one and a half books written? yes. am i ready for a career writing and illustrating my own books? absolutely. photo (c) emily barbee creative

i’m used to art festivals where fans and collectors come to me: we have a chat about books and art and stories, and they move on. it’s SO much easier than mingling amongst all the people i fangirl over on the other side of the internet. but i’m ready to BE them. so we’re working on it!

my first middle grade novel is out on query to agents, and i’m LOVING the book i’m writing for #NaNoWriMo this year. ( the idea’s been marinating all year; grateful for the month to focus and knock out an ugly first draft i’m gonna make SO much better soon!) ;D

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wishing you the bookish weekend getaway of your dreams,

*hallie :)

other side of the signing table...

the take*away? i’m ready for the other side of the signing table.