Tale of a book signing with Veronica Roth

As of only a few weeks ago, I was actually one of the very few people who had not yet read Divergent by Veronica Roth. But when I heard that she would be coming to NYC on May 1, I knew I had to fix that.

And when that illustrious day rolled around, I knew I had to dress up. Unfortunately, there is no photographic evidence of my and author Kody Keplinger's killer Dauntless and Candor outfits, respectively.

Even though Kody and I arrived about an hour early, we weren't even close to being the first people at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca waiting on Veronica Roth. Fortunately, we snagged decent seats where we sat, anxiously anticipating the moment we had been waiting for.

the lovely and phenomenal Veronica Roth!

Veronica Roth read a short segment from Insurgent (oh yes, more than ever, I cannot wait to have time to read this!) and then took lots of questions from an extremely eager audience. I have to say that it was really awesome seeing so many people so excited about these books and that I am a little bit in awe of Veronica herself.

As much as I loved getting to hear Veronica read and speak about her books and writing, I have to say that getting to see as well as meet so many people was a huge part of what made this event so fun. I had a great time chatting with, however briefly, or just seeing bloggers Mitali from Teen Author Carnival, Sam from Living Little Women, and Rachel from Bookshelf Lust; authors Claire Legrand and Dan Krokos; and lots of amazing editors and agents, including my own most wonderful boss, one of my former bosses from my internship at Lee & Low, as well as Kody's and Veronica's agent. I also had the immense please of meeting cool new people including author Alison Cherry and blogger Kristin from GrowingUp YA.

In all, it was a night to be remembered! (Did you notice my repetitive use of synonyms for "awesome"?)