{"id":1636,"date":"2010-10-26T22:44:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T04:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1636"},"modified":"2010-10-28T14:39:22","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T20:39:22","slug":"sciba-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/?p=1636","title":{"rendered":"SCIBA – 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past weekend, Scholastic sent me to Hollywood for the annual trade show of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association<\/a><\/span>, where I got to meet lots of book-loving people, and had a\u00a0wonderful time.<\/p>\n

The night before the trade show, I went out to\u00a0eat with my publicist, Lauren, and Roz, the Scholastic sales rep for the Southern California area.\u00a0 (Though\u00a0her territory\u00a0includes much more than Southern California.\u00a0 She gets to go to Hawaii on business!)\u00a0 Dinner was delicious, and the restaurant was decked out in cobwebs and spooky candles for Halloween.\u00a0 I think Lauren referred to the style as “haunted bordello” or something like that.\u00a0 Over our meal we talked a bit about my presentation, and afterward we walked back to the hotel, trodding upon the Hollywood stars (not the people, the pieces of cement).\u00a0 As we walked, Roz commented on the placement of certain stars, and how some of them are kind of off to the side all by their lonesome.\u00a0 Then Lauren pointed out that Dean Martin’s star now sits in front of a lingerie store, and we all agreed that Dean would likely have approved of women seeing his name and thinking of him as they go to buy their intimates.<\/p>\n

We went back to the hotel, and as I walked to my room I noticed that\u00a0each of the room-number plaques\u00a0also featured\u00a0a welcoming\u00a0picture in silouette.\u00a0\u00a0Like a\u00a0hand holding a doorkey, or a champaign glass.\u00a0\u00a0Well, this was the picture by my door…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…and it made me kind of vaguely\u00a0nervous the first time I opened it.<\/p>\n

\n

The next day, I gave my speech.\u00a0 I talked a bit about the books and the bookstores that have been important to me while growing up and moving around with the military.\u00a0 And then I talked a bit about The Clockwork Three<\/em>.\u00a0 I think it went pretty well.\u00a0 Fellow Utah author Ally Condie<\/a><\/span> also spoke, and talked about\u00a0choice and the role it\u00a0plays\u00a0in her new novel, Matched<\/em>.\u00a0 We shared the stage with several other authors, including Al Yankovic.\u00a0 Yes, the “weird” one, but\u00a0for his new picture book, he’s just Al.\u00a0 Did you know that guy has sold, like, 12 million\u00a0albums?\u00a0 I remember listening to him as a kid, and\u00a0if you had told me a couple of years ago that I would one day meet and speak on the same stage as Weird Al, I would probably have told you that you’d listened to “White and Nerdy<\/a><\/span>” one too many times.\u00a0 But nevertheless…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After the lunch,\u00a0there was a signing, and Ally Condie and I shared a table and signed a lot of books.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then the trade show started and I went to see Roz at the Scholastic booth, only to find Kazu Kibuishi there.\u00a0 I’ve known of Kazu’s work as editor and contributor to the Flight<\/em><\/span><\/a> comics anthologies, which are amazing, but more recently I’ve come to love his Amulet<\/em><\/span><\/a> series of graphic novels for Scholastic.\u00a0 If you haven’t read them, you should seek them out.\u00a0 At any rate, I started talking with him about his books, and we had a\u00a0great conversation about what he’s trying to achieve with\u00a0them\u00a0(and succeeding very well, if you ask me) which then turned into a conversation about story in general.\u00a0 At some point I walked away to get a drink, and when I returned, Kazu was holding The Clockwork Three<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“This is you,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Yes, it is,” I said.<\/p>\n

I guess while I\u00a0had been\u00a0gone, he had picked up my book and said to Roz, “This author has the same name as that guy I was just talking to.”<\/p>\n

To which\u00a0Roz had said, “No, that guy was <\/em>the author.”<\/p>\n

I had\u00a0been so excited to meet Kazu,\u00a0I hadn’t even introduced myself.\u00a0 So when I came back,\u00a0we all kind of chuckled about it.\u00a0 And then we continued our conversation, during the course of which Kazu’s interpretation of the Pixar film Ratatouille<\/em> shifted the way I’ve been thinking about a future project of mine\u00a0for the better.\u00a0 So thanks to him for that.\u00a0 We signed each other’s books, and he left to go to a dinner.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Kazu Kibuishi\u00a0and me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Roz, me, and Lauren<\/p>\n

Then Lauren and I went to\u00a0eat dinner at\u00a0this place that served\u00a0really amazing hamburgers.\u00a0 Now, people who know me know how much\u00a0I\u00a0love<\/em> hamburgers, so apparently Lauren knows me well.\u00a0 Having worked in Hollywood for a film studio, Lauren also gave me a guided tour of Hollywood, past Grauman’s Chinese Theater<\/a><\/span>…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

…where I snapped this photo, because I’m kind of nerdy like that:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next day, I flew home.\u00a0 It was a great weekend, and I owe a big thanks to Lauren and Roz for taking such good care of me.\u00a0 If you’re interested, Publishers Weekly<\/em> has a write-up on the event that you can read here<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past weekend, Scholastic sent me to Hollywood for the annual trade show of the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association, where I got to meet lots of book-loving people, and had a\u00a0wonderful time.
\nThe night before the trade show, I went out to\u00a0eat with my publicist, Lauren, and Roz, the Scholastic sales rep for the Southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,15,10,11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-events","category-the-clockwork-three","category-travel","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mtjQ-qo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1636"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1686,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636\/revisions\/1686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/matthewjkirby.com\/kirbside\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}