Go, Panthers!

Yesterday I had the great privilege of talking with the Potomac Falls High School Book Club. They had, thanks to the impressive wheeling and dealing skills of their savvy librarian, read advanced copies of RAMPANT and I got to go and chat with them about the book. It was the first time I’d ever talked to a group of students about my work, and it was a blast!

This is me showing them pictures of my research trip to Rome.

I made a short slideshow of photos and actual Roman places that I’d used to create the fantastic locations in RAMPANT, and then opened up the floor to questions. And what amazing questions! They asked me why I named the characters the things I did (which may be my favorite question of all time!), they asked me why I made a pretty, popular jock one of the nicest characters in the entire book (nothing like bucking the trends!), they asked why heroines in books are always blonde (Astrid is blonde, sorry to say, but I’d just come off writing four books about brunette Amy), they asked about the real life stories behind the unicorns in my book, and they asked a lot of questions about the sequel — many of which i could not answer. I was in heaven!

Showing off some ossuary art…

One of the things I thought was super awesome was how many guys had read my book. I was worried that a lot of guys would see the word “unicorn” and run (the fact that both my dad and Sailor Boy are guys and love it has not helped me get over this concern, though SB says I am underestimating the number of bloody battle scenes). We didn’t have a whole lot of time so I wasn’t able to get into my favorite topic of “other YA books I love” but I did talk a little bit about Scott Westerfeld (while chatting about Bonegrinder) and it turns out there were a bunch of Westerfans there. Do they have great taste or what?

Then I signed a bunch of unicorn-festooned bookplates for the students and we took a group picture:

Thank you, Potomac Falls High School!