Alicia Says: Tenner + Blogger Lunch

Lunch with the Tenners and Bloggers (and 2 surprise guests)!

So this past Friday (8/7/09) I had an amazing lunch with some totally awesome people. I have to tell you now that every single person who had lunch with me was really cute and sweet and nice. The lunch was probably one of the best days of my life! J Wish you all could have come!

Here’s a list of everyone that went!

Bloggers!!!
Meee
Vania http://reveriemedia.blogspot.com/
Khy http://freneticreader.blogspot.com/
Catt http://www.thedreamereader.blogspot.com/

Authors!!!!
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder, March 2010)
Bree Despain (The Dark Divine, December 2009)
Lindsey Leavitt (Princess for Hire, March 2010)
Denise Jaden (Losing Faith, Fall 2010)
Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures, December 2009)
Margaret Peterson (Beautiful Creatures, December 2009)
Christy Raedeke (The Last Daykeeper, May 2010)
Suzanne Young (The Naughty List, February 2010)
Jennifer Cervantes (Tortilla Sun, Spring 2010)
–and these were the surprises—
Jay Asher (Thirteen Reasons Why)
Holly Black (The Modern Faerie Trilogy, The Spiderwick Chronicles and more)

There was also my mom, Khy’s mom and sister and Jennifer’s 2 daughters.

So the day started with me arriving at the hotel about 40 minutes early. Don’t ask why I was that early because I have no idea. After waiting around for 10 minutes I saw Catt and her mom. We talked for awhile and looked around for everyone. Finally, at a little past 12:30 Kimberly showed up and gave us hugs. After that, basically everyone showed up including Lisa Schroeder who wanted to say hi to us. And this is a bit embarrassing, but I was pretty star-struck from seeing her that I barely talked! Which totally sucked because I love her books. In fact, I think I may have acted like I didn’t know which books she wrote. Sorry Lisa! Lisa left after that and all of the authors headed over to The Pink Taco while me and Catt got our moms. Luckily Kimberly and Jennifer waited for us. We ended up getting a bit lost once we hit the mall since we didn’t know where the restaurant was. Suzanne led us the wrong way! And we ended up in the food court, but we did find the restaurant. Once we got there we had to wait outside for awhile and who walked past us? Magic Johnson. That’s right, MAGIC FREAING JOHNSON! Everyone was star-struck and amazed to see him. Khy had a present for all the authors. She and her mom made little gift bags for them! They were really cute and all of the authors were really happy that they got them. Lunch was good and us bloggers actually got a few things too! I sat in-between my mom and Catt and across from me was Jennifer, Lindsey and Christy. We talked about a lot of different things and took tons of pictures. About halfway through Holly, Kami and Margie had to leave because they had to attend one of the lectures, but everyone else stayed. And that was lunch.

Some random facts:
Jennifer had the cutest daughters EVER!! They were totally adorable and sweet and everything. Seriously. Wish I had a picture to show you.
Suzanne is really peppy and happy.
Kimberly and Bree were beyond sweet.
Jennifer gave me some good advice.
Lindsey was really cute and recommended a book to me.
Denise was super sweet.
Christy was super nice.
Jay was waaay cool.
Margie was my squealing partner and boy did we squeal.
Kami has the best voice.
Holly was…also waaay cool.
Catt made an awesome shirt with all of their books.
Khy and Vania were amazing.
I spaced and didn’t bring anything for them to autograph—my bad.
Jay is working on a new book but no details.
Every single one of them gave me a hug!
And took a picture with me!
When I saw Suzanne I ran to her, gave her a hug and told her I loved her hair.
Jay signed my book!!!!
I asked Holly for a hug.
Also told Holly I loved her a million times.
Actually I told all of them I loved them.
They were all the best people ever!!!

Also here are some of the goodies they gave us. We were honestly not expecting to get anything, but some of the authors surprised us with things. Kimberly gave us an ARC of her book, bookmarks and some candy; Bree gave us chocolate, the soundtrack to her book, stickers and bookmarks; Suzanne gave us cute pens that kind of looked like pompoms with a note attached and a bookmark. The others didn’t bring anything, which was fine. This might sound corny, but honestly, their presence was enough for us!

I think that’s everything. With my luck I forgot to say something important. Pictures will be up later. I won’t be home for 2 more weeks so I can’t upload my pictures. So I’ll make a post just for them.

For now you can check out pictures here and their accounts:
http://suzanne-young.blogspot.com/2009/08/i-heart-my-bloggers.html
http://reveriemedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/finally-aq-picture-update.html
http://raedeke.blogspot.com/2009/08/scbwi-update.html
http://baskinex.blogspot.com/2009/08/live-blogging-from-scbwi-la-part-2.html
http://jayasher.blogspot.com/2009/08/scbwi-09-day-1.html

The others haven’t written anything yet, but when they do I’ll either add the links here or add them to my picture post.

Thanks again everyone for going to the lunch! I had sooooo much fun!!! Love you all!

-Alicia