Saturday 18 July 2009

YAYApalooza

What an extraordinary opportunity I had this past week. When I attended a gathering at Brilliance Audio that’s been dubbed YAYApalooza, I had a number of fascinating experiences. 

Let’s start with what it’s like to finally meet in person the disembodied voice you’ve been talking to for nearly a year, one that has negotiated contracts for you, and encouraged you when you thought you weren’t going to make it through the next round of revisions. This person is otherwise known as “your agent.”

How wonderful it truly was to meet Josh Adams—who, until last week, I had only known through tools of technology (email and phone). I’m so glad that I have the chance to work with all the people at Adams Literary. They are tireless advocates.

Meeting the many people at Brilliance Audio who participate in the making of an audio book was another awesome part of YAYApalooza. Tim Ditlow, who acquires the novels that will be a part of the children’s line of Brilliance Audio, is such a friendly and fun guy. Then there were studio managers, plant managers, sound engineers, an entire sales force…everyone there contributed to my wonderful experience learning about how audio books are made.

I also got to meet Tavia Gilbert, who is the narrator of The Everafter. Her voice is perfect—at least it is when you can hear it. The day I was there to meet her, she had laryngitis, but the book’s director made sure I got to hear some of the book’s recording session from the day before. This is why I know she has the perfect voice to be the narrator of Madison Stanton. She’s also just a marvelous person and fun to converse with.

As far as I’m concerned, there are never enough opportunities in life to talk about engaging books with people who are widely read in YA literature, but YAYApalooza was a bookworm’s heaven.  Talking with Cindy Dobrenz, Lynn Rutan, Mary Burkey and Ed Spicer (all fantastic bloggers) gave me quite the fix. Walter Mayes is a fabulous storyteller, and an expert on young adult literature. Much to my delight, I had the opportunity to meet him, too.

Meeting Mike Winerip of the Adam Canfield series was another great part of this trip. Any time I can meet a fellow author, I’m ecstatic. Mike is fun to talk to and his enthusiasm is contagious. Oh, and it helps that he writes for the New York Times and I’m a fan of that newspaper.

I’m so thankful I had this awesome opportunity!

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My Good Reads...

Amy's bookshelf: read

The Other Boleyn Girl
The Twentieth Wife: A Novel
Conrad's Fate (Chrestomanci, #5)
Circle of Friends
The Handmaid's Tale
Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter
Dairy Queen
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Possession: A Romance
The Call of Earth
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Lovely Bones
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England
The Hunt for Red October
To Kill a Mockingbird
City of Bones
How to Be Good
Great Expectations
The Thirteenth Tale
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Joy Luck Club
Beloved
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Wives and Daughters
Howl's Moving Castle
The Kite Runner
Nothing But the Truth
Anne of Green Gables
About a Boy
Doctor Thorne
Romeo and Juliet
Among the Hidden
The Color Purple
World Without End
The Children of Men
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Sarum: The Novel of England
Doomsday Book
The Golden Compass
Year of Wonders
Memoirs of a Geisha
Flowers for Algernon
The Subtle Knife
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Valley of Horses
A Tale of Two Cities
Uglies
Bridget Jones's Diary
Dune
The Serpent's Tale
Angels & Demons
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Dracula
Among the Impostors
The Frog Princess
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The Nanny Diaries
The Ships of Earth
Charlie Bone and the Beast
Spanking Shakespeare
Ender's Shadow
Wake
A Farewell to Arms
Emma
The Outsiders
Frankenstein
Witch Week
Allegra Maud Goldman
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School
Charlie Bone and the Hidden King
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Charlie Bone and the Shadow
Among the Barons
The Name of the Rose: Including Postscript
Thirteen Reasons Why
The Crucible
Charmed Life
Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen, Will Travel
Timeline
Framley Parsonage
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Man Who Was Poe
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Little Women
The Shadow of the Wind
The Pillars of the Earth
Ender's Game
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Night
Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy
The Clan of the Cave Bear
The Secret Life of Bees
The Shifter
An Inspector Calls


Amy Huntley's favorite books »