Spring Into The Future Event

WE JUST MET A WHOLE BUNCH OF REALLY COOL PEOPLE. At an amazing indie bookstore in NYC called Books of Wonder, a Spring Into The Future event was held and WE TOTALLY WENT AND IT WAS SO AWESOME. Megan and I were so excited, obviously, and so was my sister Lauren. We broke out the puffy paint, covering t-shirts with quotes and things from the books. We made four shirts, each one representing a different author/book.

How did we decide who would represent each book? We figured out who was most similar to the main character of each book. (Yes, I realize it's slightly insane. But hey, insane works for us.) So Megan is most like Lena in Pandemonium, Lauren's similar to Aria in Under the Never Sky, Katherine is like Eve from Eve, and I am Juliette from Shatter Me. It was very fun and exciting to spend several hours making these shirts. Kind of. Okay, so there were a lot of hand cramps and frantically flipping pages of books to check the spelling of things. (I think I lose a bit of my sanity every time we make these shirts.) But it was worth it.

Lauren, Rachel (me), Katherine, and Megan. (We did not line up in height order on purpose!

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TEAM JULIETTE/LENA/EVE/ARIA!

Our lovely friend Katherine recently had a birthday, and we decided it would be fun to KIDNAP her and take her to the event with us as a surprise. We pulled up in her church parking lot, handed her a shirt, and were all "YAYYY LET'S GO TO NEW YORK CITY AND MEET SOME AMAZING AUTHORS!" Best birthday present ever, right? (I was nominated to make her shirt, by the way, because I have the neatest handwriting. I am just saying.)  This will only add to what Rachel's aunt calls her "giant head" but her shirts are usually the best. Which is why she got to make Katherine's. Hehehe oh Katherine, you thought you were only getting books for your birthday :)

We all decided that Katherine's shirt was clearly the coolest.

When we arrived at the bookstore, we bought our books and got our numbers for the signing (numbers 1-4 woooot!) and then we browsed for quite a long time. We basically stared at the pretty shelves with the pretty books and squealed and fangirled and read the backs of books and jumped around and had a lot of fun. You know, the normal things to do in bookstores.

We also posed in front of bookshelves, because why not?

Then, since we had a few hours to kill before it started, we left the store in search of yummy food. Once yummy food had been consumed, we went back to the bookstore and flopped down on the ground to wait. People kept coming over and asking to take pictures of our shirts and/or just taking pictures without asking, which kind of freaked us out but was also really cool. We kind of felt like celebrities. In a totally dorky way. (We have been nicknamed the Dork Quartet, just FYI.) I think this is a pretty accurate description of us.

And we met Sabrina Rojas Weiss, who is the senior editor of VH1's TheFabLife.com, who is really nice and awesome and who took our picture.

AND THEN.

AND THEN THE AUTHORS APPEARED AND IT WAS SO EXCITING. So exciting, in fact, that I uh, kinda forgot to take pictures? Or record the authors speaking? I FAIL AT EVERYTHING.

I did get this picture! Which didn't even come out that great. Oh well. (Also, shout out to Megan's mom for her head being in the picture!)

Each author read a passage from their books: Veronica about a cave, Tahereh about living through books, Anna about a bear attack, and Lauren about Alex and running (I may have teared up a little. IDK IDK.) And then they all summarized their books as if they were texting it to someone. Lauren's was spot-on: Omg. Love is banned. Alex and Lena. Omfg. Julian. What? This is such an accurate summary I can't even handle it.

Which world (in the four books) would they thrive in? Tahereh would want to be in a pod, surfing the internet with her smart-eye and being a coward in Under the Never Sky. Veronica loves survival stories, so she'd want to live in Eve. Anna knows the world of Eve so well that she's best equipped to survive in her own world. Lauren is a fan of the BOYS FOR SLAVE LABOR idea, so she would want to live in Eve.

I got to ask them a question, which was so awesome! I asked: If you could be one of your own characters for a day, who would you be and what would you do? (Before she could answer the question Tahereh had to comment on how awesome she thought Rachel's shirt was. She got kinda distracted.) Tahereh said that she would be Warner because he's a very bad person and it would be cool to be in his head, Veronica would be Roar so she could walk around and be all "I AM AWESOME", Anna would be Arden because she thinks she's a really interesting character and considers her and Eve two halves of a whole, and Lauren would be Raven because she's badass.

Some random things I learned about the authors: Lauren Oliver is all for using boys as slave labor and she also threatened her agent into representing her. Tahereh Mafi read The Giver in seventh grade, and it blew her mind. That was when she first started thinking about the world ending. Anna Carey likes to experience fear in a controlled environment. Veronica Rossi's sketchbook is one of her most prized possessions. Anna and Veronica read the same survival books.

Oh look, I found some videos of the event on Youtube! *hugs person who posted videos* You can go here if you want to see them.

I am randomly jumping in here, so I hope that is cool with everyone! :) Quick little shout out to Books of Wonder for being the BEST PLACE ON EARTH. Seriously, I'm going to move in there one of these days. The people there are so nice, all of their events are so much fun, and not to mention the awesomeness of all of the BOOKS. It's a little hard to not spend all of your money on the pretty signed copies, just saying. Plus, books and cupcakes in one building? I think that explains it all.

Oh hi Megan! I didn't mean to hog this post or anything, but I was bored and up at THE CRACK OF DAWN, so I figured I should start working on this. While you slept. I AM JUST SAYING.

Anyway, so we were the first in line for the signing, which was amazing. The authors were all so nice and funny and awesome. And they complimented our shirts and took pictures while we tried not to FREAK OUT. 

LOOK AT THE PRETTY SIGNED BOOKS!

AND THE PRETTY SIGNED POSTER! (side note: Cynthia Hand was not there, which was a bit sad because I LOVE her books, but trust me, the levels of awesome were high enough without her, so all was well!

I'm pretty sure I couldn't actually say anything cool or funny or intelligent because I was in INTERNAL FANGIRL MODE. I mean, I met four people who wrote some of the best books ever and inspire me so much and AHHHH! BEST DAY EVER.

Look at the awesome Shatter Me swag!

I'm realizing now that it would have been nice to get pictures WITH THE AUTHORS! *facepalm* Alas. It was too chaotic and exciting to like, think clearly and stuff. But overall, this was one of the best experiences ever.

Thank you to:
Megan's mom (for driving us from NJ to NYC and just being around us in general)
Katherine's mom (for helping us organize OPERATION KIDNAP KATHERINE)
My mom (for giving me money to buy books)
ALL MOMS EVERYWHERE (because apparently that is what we are doing)
My aunt (for meeting us at the bookstore and bringing us books and making fun of our crazy fangirlness and for being awesome)
Veronica Rossi, Tahereh Mafi, Anna Carey, and Lauren Oliver (for writing amazing books and being really nice and just for being the most amazing people ever)
All the people who took pictures of us in our shirts (for making us feel like dorky celebrities for a few minutes)
Books of Wonder (FOR BEING THE BEST BOOKSTORE EVER)
The Revolving Door to Books of Wonder: For causing much entertainment because the four of us apparently FAIL at walking through them. Only you and Katherine fail at walking through them! The rest of us were fine! More like Katherine! She got stuck!!
The guy sitting at the table behind us at dinner (for smiling at us and causing us to text each other about how creepy he was)

Books of Wonder has some great pictures of the event here. Overall, this was an amazing experience and I had so much fun! I think I'm going to go reread all these wonderful books! :)

-Rachel

Hehehe hey guys! :) Everything Rachel said above is 100% accurate. I can't even really put into words how much I love going to these signings and getting to meet all of the awesome authors. Especially the Books Of Wonder Events! The people there are so nice, their events are really well run, and they really are a lot of fun. Thanks to all of the people who took pictures of us, it really does feel like I'm the nerdiest/dorkiest celebrity ever for a bit, which is a pretty cool feeling. Also thanks to my mom for being so willing to get us to New York for these kinds of things, it means a lot!

Thanks to everyone involved for making yesterday the BEST DAY EVER!

-Megan