Being a Complete Account of the Amazing Adventures of Diana at the New York Public Library and Beyond

8:00 AM: I (groggy) am dropped off by Sailor Boy (only vaguely less groggy, and thereby qualified to operate a motor vehicle) at the bus station. Pick up my tickets at the Will Call machine.

8:28 AM: Bus arrives. I get in line to board. Smarmy guy behind me points at my ticket and says, “I think you needed to get in the real line and get a boarding number.” Points at his own ticket, which resides in a fancy folder emblazoned with a giant number 23. I smile and say, “Oh, I got mine from Will Call.” Begin looking at other people’s tickets, which all reside in fancy folders with numbers on them. Have never once, in all the times I’ve taken a bus to NYC, gone to the “real line” to get a boarding number. Have never been asked for a boarding number. Begin to get nervous.

8:29 AM: Bus driver comes out and begins to take tickets. Smarmy guy behind me says, “Aren’t you going to board by boarding number?” Bus driver looks sheepish, and says sure he will, gives the people at the front of the line the tickets he already took, and starts out by calling #1. Smarmy guy smarms. I freak out until I notice that on my non-fancy computer printed Will Call machine ticket, it says, “Boarding #19.” Take that, smarm!

8:35 AM: Boarding is taking approximately ten times longer this way, especially given that there are obviously enough seats, and it’s not as if the seats are assigned anyway. At last my number is called, and I get one of the last empty rows.

8:40 AM: At last we are away. I have an empty seat beside me! Joy! I will get to stretch out and nap on the way to NYC! But first, I will finish this chapter I’m reading and eat my breakfast bar.

8:59 AM: As I finish my breakfast bar, this guy appears out of nowhere and asks if he can sit in my seat. I am wondering what seat he was sitting in for the last twenty minutes while the bus was in motion. He promptly plops down besides me and does that guy thing where he spreads his legs into a veritable split. Cramped, I try to make myself comfortable.

11:30 AM: I wake up, and try to divine from glimpses of the road signs where we are. The guy who made me uncomfortable the whole trip up is nowhere to be seen, leaving me to wonder if he was not, perhaps, a hallucination. We pass a sign for the Lincoln Tunnel. Wow, we’re going to be an hour early!

11:35 AM: Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Nix earlier observation.

12:35 PM: Arrive Port Authority. De-bus. Exit. Walk several blocks down 42nd Street, through Times Square, which just gets less enjoyable every time I have to do it, and emerge, victorious and unscathed on the other side near Bryant Park.

12:55 PM: At Bryant Park, two boys from a middle school in the Bronx are doing a video project asking passers-by about eating disorders. I participate.

1:15 PM: Arrive NYPL. Check coat and scarf, which later turns out to be a mistake. Head into bathroom to make myself presentable, which only mildly succeeds (evidence: photos, below, show hair that has clearly been on bus for four and a half hours)

1:17 PM: The glamorous part of the day begins. Yippee!! The Celeste Bartos Forum of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library is quite lovely, all gold marble and glass vaulted ceilings and tiny turn-of-the-century lights that reminded my friend Margaret of a carousel. Lots of people milling about. Our books are all on well-populated tables at the back. I am shelved in a section marked: The A-List: Adult Novels for Teens, along with Jodi Picoult, Marisha Pessl, Curtis Sittenfeld, and fellow Bantam Dell author Sandra Kring (The Book of Bright Ideas). I find my editor, and we find Secret Society Girl, and we gush and get our pictures taken holding the book.

1:30 ish PM: I see someone holding my book open to the back cover flap and pointing at me and then referring to the back cover flap again, so I go up and introduce myself. I am also wearing a name tag that reads: Diana Peterfreund / “Secret Society Girl” which cracks me up because it makes me sound like I am, in fact, a secret society girl. (Though I think I have it better than Patricia McCormick, whose name tag reads “Sold“.) The name tag helps. Anyway, turns out that the people holding my book are all NYPLibrarians who were trying to decide, based on my hair, if I was the girl in the photo. My hair is several inches longer now that it was in the photo, but apparently close enough.

I get to meet Cara, the librarian who blogged about my book those many moons ago (hi, Cara!) and recommended my book for the list. Cara works at the St. George Staten Island branch of the library, and just opened a teen reading room. If you live in or near Staten Island, I recommend you check it out. I’ve never been in a library with a teen reading room, but the very idea fills the sixteen year old girl living inside me with actual spasms of delight. And, as you may imagine, Cara rocks. We spend a long time discussing YA books, Dartmouth, the audience I intended for my books (“anyone who likes to read about college?”), and how cool libraries are. I give her a pin. She introduces me to some other librarians. Chatting occurs. (Please note how fantastic Cara’s skirt is in the picture to the right. Please also note how very coordinated and brown we are. Aren’t we in sync?)

We interrupt this recap for a worthy aside: I never knew any librarians personally before my book came out, but I have met so many lovely ones in the past year, and yesterday’s events just drove home the point that librarian may be the profession that draws in all the cool kids. Hollywood totally has it wrong about the “librarian” image. More wrong than they do about the “author” image, if that’s possible. Maybe I just hang out with too many lawyers here in D.C., but yesterday I met about a dozen librarians and began to get depressed that I didn’t live in New York so we could exchange phone numbers and get drinks and be buddies.

1:45 ish PM: I meet Delia Sherman, who swears she recognizes me. Later, Scott Westerfeld will propose a theory about how “blog recognition” sometimes crosses over into real life, as Delia and I know each other “virtually” on Justine Larbalestier’s blog. Delia’s book, Changeling, is gorgeous. I need a copy for me and a copy for some lucky ten year old I know. Sandra Kring arrives with her daughter, Shannon Kring Biro, and we chat.

1:55 PM: I see my friend Margaret, who looks rather fetching in a bright blue coat with her hair all red and not looking like it’s been on a bus for four hours. Margaret agrees to take a picture of me with Fortitude, the lion who has joined us for the festivities, as long as he doesn’t come too close to her. Yes, it was most definitely Fortitude, and not Patience. I know because I asked him. Margaret and I run into Libba Bray. Hi, Libba! Libba is there for moral support. Margaret claims she brought a foam #1 finger. Doesn’t Margaret take a lovely photo? I think I need more pictures of me with giant furry creatures.

2:00 PM: The festivities begin. Sandra Payne, the coordinator for Young Adult services at the NYPL, welcomes us all, and gives away prizes for a high school graphic design award. The runners-up and winner are incredibly talented and stylish young women who are so much more put together than I was at their age. I really wish I took a picture of their designs. The winner’s design is featured on the front cover of this year’s New York Public Library Books For The Teen Age List (this link currently goes to last year’s list).

We interrupt this recap for an amusing aside: After a few glasses of wine, the joke, “I’m on the New York zzzzzzzz List” is surprisingly funny. Without wine, it’s not even the least bit so.

All the authors are named and stand, or at least wave. (Sandra Payne pronounces my name perfectly on the very first try, a feat which always makes me fall just a little bit in love with the person in question.) All the publishers, etc. are asked to stand. All the librarians too. Everyone claps. I am humbled to be included on this list.

One librarian, Jack, introduces Alice Hoffman, who looks exactly like you think Alice Hoffman looks, and is even wearing this glorious flame-colored shawl. Alice Hoffman gives a beautiful, inspiring, and rousing speech about what is is like to write, and to write for Young Adults, and how she was inspired to write her List book Incantation (and tells a story about a taxi driver who may or may not have been there and reminds me of my bus experience that morning which did not, unfortunately, inspire me to write a book about the Spanish Inquistition) and how the most important books she can remember are the books she read as a teen, and everyone in the audience is nodding and it’s all quite fabulous. Unfortunately, I am totally consumed with envy for Alice Hoffman, because she was smart enough to be wearing her shawl, and I checked mine in the coat room, and I’m freezing. So while she is discussing Edward Eager and Wuthering Heights and this hilarious run-in she once had with Hilary Clinton re: Heathcliff, I am wondering if there is any way to a) steal out of the room, grab my shawl/coat and come back, b) steal Alice Hoffman’s shawl without anyone noticing. (There wasn’t, so I didn’t.)

3:45 PM: The formal part of the festivities are over, and we are once again mingling/chatting/etc. I meet Maureen Johnson (hi, Maureen!), whose book, Devilish, is a Faustian yarn, and is thus in the “Do-Over” section of the list reserved for classic tales retold, and some more librarians. I meet Anne from the Tompkins Square branch on the LES and she and I talk about SSG. She’s so funny! She has many theories about the trajectory of Amy’s love life. And, as I pointed out to my editor later, I have no poker face. I think if I were someone who wrote long, drawn-out mystery series, I’d have been made a long time ago.

Reiterate: love librarians.

4:00 PM: My editor, Sandra Kring, Shannon Kring Biro, and I try to find a place to get something to eat. Because it is before 5 PM, this is harder than it looks. Eventually, we stumble into a sort of Irish Pub/tapas bar on 40th St., where we drink wine and talk writing. The Krings are amazing. Shannon is an accomplished cookbook author, and she and her husband, a chef named Marcel Biro, have a chain of restaurants, run a cooking school, and have an award-winning cooking show on PBS. As if that’s not enough, she has a memoir coming out with her sister Natalie Kring next week called Sister Salty, Sister Sweet. (I really wish I had a link to Shannon’s webpage, which features a dancing Ken doll.) I had so much fun talking to them both! If you haven’t read Sandra Kring’s novel, The Book of Bright Ideas, I highly recommend it. It was a Target Book Club pick last year, and is making major waves.

5:30 PM: The Krings go off to live it up in New York. My editor goes to a dinner party. I go to meet Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier (whose book, Magic’s Child, is out now!), Maureen Johnson, and Cassandra Clare (whose debut, City of Bones, is out now!) at the Campbell Apartments in Grand Central Station. It’s dark and loud and apparently, half the party was not allowed in due to dress code restrictions. (Sorry, Margaret!) There are a lot of writers at that table, but I really only get a chance to chat with Eric Luper, whose first novel Big Slick, about a teen poker whiz, is out from FSG this fall. Hi, Eric!

7:00 PM: Scott, Justine, Maureen, and I decide to have dinner. Justine has not brought a coat, and practically freezes as we make our way across town to this no-dairy organic place called Josie’s on Third Ave. I give her my shawl, which I did not steal from Alice Hoffman. At dinner, we talk about geekdom, YA books, writing, writing, and schtuff. Maureen and I are disappointed to discover that, despite clearly listing arugula juice as an option on the menu, we can’t actually get a glass of plain arugula juice, which we had made a pact to drink if we could. We must mix it with a more normal sounding juice, such as apple, pear, carrot, tomato, etc. So much for that. However, we do indulge in a five dollar glass of ice tea, which is made with hibiscus and cinnamon, and may in fact have been worth five dollars. I am consumed with envy for Justine and Scott and Maureen, who, from all accounts, seem to get to have dinners like this with other writers all the time. (And yes, I know I had lunch with Justine just last week, but it was the first time since, like, June.)

8:30 PM: I hop in a cab and go to Port Authority

8:48 PM: Cab is stopped in traffic in Times Square. I start to get nervous.

8:50 PM: I don’t get the etiquette of cabs. If I can walk quicker, should I just get out?

8:51 PM: Screw it. I get out, and walk to Port Authority.

8:52 PM: I buy a totally unnecessary magazine to read on the way back to D.C. It turns out that the bus driver doesn’t even turn on the personal booklights over each seat, so I couldn’t have read if I wanted to.

8:54 PM: I arrive at my gate, and am given a “you were almost late” look by the ticket taker. No one notices my boarding number. I get on the bus to discover that, joy of joys, the back seat (three across) is totally free. I proceed to spread out in hopes that no one will arrive after me and that this morning’s mysterious disappearing passenger won’t reappear. When the bus starts, I realize why that spot is open. There’s this huge bright blue emergency light over my seat. Also, the back of the bus is a good fifteen degrees colder than the front. I spend the next three and a half hours trying to find the most comfortable way to cover my entire body with my coat and my face with the shawl I didn’t steal from Alice Hoffman so as to block out the big blue light.

1:00 AM: Sailor Boy arrives in Nikita (who totally needs a wash, not to mention an oil change) to pick me up. Ah, SB, how I love thee. Ah, Nikita, you’re the coolest.

Except for librarians.