Meeting the fabulous Veronica Roth

SJ Kincaid (Insignia), Veronica Roth (Insurgent), Dan Wells (Partials), Aprilynne Pike (Destined)

The Dark Days of Summer Tour strolled by and with Veronica Roth on the panel, how could I not find a babysitter, sit in stop-and-go traffic the. entire. time, almost rear-end the car in front of me, and go?

Of course, after the rear-ending almost-accident, I finally arrived...15 minutes late! Ahhh! The horror. So I walked very swiftly to the back of the audience, only to be reminded by the Barnes & Noble employee every 5 minutes that I'm standing in the "Fire Zone." No I'm not. I'm just looking at this Ricki Lake Biography that just happens to be at the back of the group.

So until I was literally shooed away, these are the itty-bitty bits I noted:

Inspiration: Roth's inspiration for Divergent came during a Psych 101 class when they were talking about exposure therapy.

Characters and their names: Wells uses a lot of people he knows in real life in his stories; in every story there is a Nick and a Steve. One lives and one dies in every book. Roth pronounces "Tobias" as Toe-bye-us vs how I've been saying it: Toe-bee-us. Beatrice came from finding the stuffiest name and being able to shorten it to the coolest name (Tris).

Harry Potter: Wells talked about how in Harry Potter, Hermione figures everything out but Harry gets all the glory. Roth is a huge fan of Harry Potter and will even be attending the Ascendio Conference in FL.

Advice for aspiring writers: Wells produces a podcast called Writing Excuses for aspiring writers. He says to allow yourself to write a bad book. Change your goal in writing: write because you love it, not necessarily because you want to publish. (That was probably the best advice I've heard in a long time...do you write because you need/want to publish or do you write because you love it?)

Also, I wish I got a chance to read Insignia...it sounded really good.

And that's what I gathered before I got herded to THE VERY END of the line. It was very clear that most of the people came for Insurgent. For the next 2 hours, I got to talk to a group of teens and a Dan Wells fan and another woman who went to school with Wells. This is probably my favorite part of book signings: getting to TALK to other people about the books we love, plus gossip about all the Mortal Instruments drama..Plus, I learned a new slang word (ship)...and yes, I DID have to look that up when I got home; I felt really really old.

But finally, I got to meet Veronica!

And as to be expected, whenever I get nervous, I start to embarrass myself with mundane pleasantries. "Hi, I loved your book (duh) and blogged about it (here and here); and uh, do you want my bookmark?" Really? That's the best I had? Why can't I ever think to say something so much cooler...it's not like I didn't have time to think about it...What would you have said?