Greetings from the Bolt Bus

Here I am on the Bolt Bus traveling back to DC. I love living in the future. I’m on the internet on the highway, y’all.

I had a truly wonderful time in New York City. Sunday, I hit up the “debs” signing at Books of Wonder, met a bunch of authors (like Megan Crewe and Jon Skovron) and took a picture of the fantabulous Sarah Cross which is currently trapped on my camera, unfortunately. But she was wearing a Santa hat and giving out candy canes.

The awesome never stops with Ms. Cross.

Then a friend and I went up to the Morgan Library to check out the Jane Austen exhibit, which was very interesting and mostly consisted of her letters to her sister. Since I’m a sucker for a good Austen letter (fictional or otherwise), I enjoyed it immensely. Though I have to say that one of my favorite items at the exhibit was Vladimir Nabokov’s lecture notes on Mansfield Park. Apparently, Nabokov was not much of a fan of Austen, and had been considering leaving her out of his class syllabus entirely until a friend of his told him to read MP and that won him over.

(Though a fan of Nabokov’s, I don’t agree with his opinion on these books.)

On Monday, I had a lovely and long overdue lunch with my Random House editor and we talked about all kinds of exciting new projects that will, sadly, remain a secret for now. Then I had a writing date with Maureen Johnson, and we ran into Coe Booth and Tayari Jones. Much writing was not accomplished — at least, not by me!

After that, I went to the Books of Wonder holiday party, where I saw Robin Wasserman, Sarah Beth Durst, Heidi Kling, Gayle Forman, Erin Downing and a ton of other people. Good times.

And then I bought a bus ticket to go from DC to NY instead of the other way ’round. Oops. But I managed to get on anyway. Now it’s back to the grind.