Tuesday, February 05, 2008

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

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That just sounds like so much fun that I wish I had been there!

Can't wait to hear the CD!

~Emma

Stephanie J. Blake said...

How fun!!! Are you speaking at SCBWI LA?

Lisa Yee said...

I'm in Chicago this week, otherwise I would have shown up at Vroman's!

BTW, my dad used to teach at Franklin High.

Linda D. (sbk) said...

Wow, sounds like you're having so much fun!

It would all scare the **** out of me, so I'm glad you're at least enjoying it. :)

Anonymous said...

dude. that's my galley group. and my best friend. like, YES.

i'm sorry i missed it last night. i had somewhere else to be that was infinitely less important than hearing jay asher talk. but, alas, my parents seemed to think otherwise.

which is why i was really, really excited to hear that you might come to one of our meetings. oh, please do. we all love you to death.

Thirteen Reasons Why (you know it's important when i capitalize it properly) is our mascot book. it's the one galley that every single person's read. i think we all cried at the end too. it's fantastically good.

oh, we love love LOVE it.

you know what i really can't believe? that i own a copy of one of the best books in the world, touched and signed by the author. now that is cool.

looking forward to you visiting us at vroman's, mr. asher. :]

Disco Mermaids said...

I just got back from recording bits and pieces to four songs...and I am beyond excited with how things are turning out.

Can't wait for y'all to hear it.

Of course, the night was topped off by one of the coolest blog comments ever! Thanks, Lummy.

- Jay

Lummy said...

we had a discussion at galleys one day and we decided (most of us, anyways) that however much we love Thirteen Reasons Why, only the extraordinarily brave among us would be able to listen to the audiobook. because sure, you can read a book about audiotapes and suicide. but if we all cried just reading it, imagine how bad it'd be actually listening to the tapes. i'm fairly sure i'd freak out at some point. but one of us is going to buy the audiobook, and maybe we'll sit in the coffeeshop and listen sometime and cry into our drinks.

our COFFEES. all right?