Super Tuesday (and Monday) -- Jay

Today is Super Tuesday, so it’s time for many of us to vote. I’m not gonna tell you who I’m voting for because I love you and I don’t wanna get into an argument (which I would win, by the way). So go vote! Not only is it important…it’s fun, too.

But it’s also Super Duper Tuesday. Why? Because it’s the beginning of a dream-come-true for my wife. This evening, we’re going into a studio to start recording a bunch of her songs. You might be familiar with her slow song, Soul Alone, which appears at the end of the Thirteen Reasons Why audiobook. But the songs we’ll be recording over the next however-long-it-takes will be a little faster, a little funkier, and include me on guitar. Woo-hoo! I'm sure I’ll be reporting our progress in future posts, and eventually we’ll sell the C.D.s on my MySpace page. So stay tuned…

And in case you weren’t aware, yesterday happened to be Super Monday. I was down in L.A. for a full day’s worth of presentations. It began at Franklin High in Los Angeles, where I gave two presentations to about 60 students. The students were awesome (as usual)…and so were their teachers. Then I went to Gabrielino High in San Gabriel, where I spoke in the library to about 100 students from several classes, including Peer Helpers (student counselors), which was something I was involved in back in the day. My favorite part? When a student (who stayed up till 4:30 in the morning to finish the book) showed me her journal, in which she’d copied a handful of her favorite passages from my book. Amazing!

But did the day end there? Oh no!

Then I spoke at Vroman’s…that awesome indie bookstore in Pasadena. It was a bigger turnout than I’d expected (and not just because my grandma, aunt, and uncle were there). It was my first time speaking to a group where the majority of people had already read my book, which added a cool dimension to the presentation. And the Q&A was a ton of fun. It even got a little silly when someone asked me to describe some of my earlier books. It became obvious, very quickly, why those books never sold.

In fact, I was having so much fun throughout the day that I forgot to take pictures till the very end. The only one I snapped was when the people at Vroman’s began lining up for autographs. (Have I ever told you how much I love scribbling my name in books?)


- Jay