Who knew it would be almost 100 degrees in Los Angeles this weekend? I think I was delirious with the heat... but I survived!

Below are some fun photos of my time signing books at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday and Sunday April 26-27, 2008 at the UCLA Campus. The book festival has been around since 1996 - and yours truly has never, ever missed a Book Festival in the past 12 years. I spoke at a panel in 2005 and was so honored to have been included in the festival! This year, I signed books at the amazing BOOKSOUP booth. Support your indie bookseller and buy books at BOOKSOUP! They are located at 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069. Their website is: http://www.booksoup.com/

I got a chance to watch supermodel and gourmet chef Padma Lakshmi of Bravo's "Top Chef" reality series cook a recipe from her book and do a reading at the Culinary Stage which was also a lot of fun.

I got to hang out with some cool YA authors at the festival, including these fine folks:

Cherry Cheva, SHE'S SO MONEY (HarperCollins '08)
Michael Reisman, SIMON BLOOM: THE GRAVITY KEEPER (Dutton '08)
Betty G. Birney, SURPRISES ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY (Putnam '08)
C. Leigh Purtill, ALL ABOUT VEE (RazorBill '08)
Sasha Watson, VIDALIA IN PARIS (Viking '08)
Jordana Fraiberg, IN YOUR ROOM (Razorbill '08)
Lisa Yee, STANFORD WONG FLUNKS BIGTIME (Scholastic '07)
Eileen Rosenbloom, STUCK DOWN (Llewellyn '05)
Jay Asher, 13 REASONS WHY (Razorbill '07)
Robin Benway, AUDREY WAIT (Razorbill '08)
Sonya Sones, WHAT MY GIRLFRIEND DOESN'T KNOW (Simon & Schuster '07)
Cecil Castellucci, THE PLAIN JANES (with Jim Rugg, Minx '07)
Susan Casey, KIDS INVENTING! (Wiley Books)
Mark Williams, CITY OF RUINS: DANGER BOY EPISODE 4 (Candlewick '07)
Heather Tomlinson, Aurelie: A Faerie Tale (Henry Holt '08)

Saturday night, a bunch of us YA authors (most of us belong to THE LAYAS, a collective of LA-based published YA novelists) met at the hip and very stylish Hotel Angeleno West ... we had an incredible view of LA from the top floor of the hotel and I ate these yummy gliders (mini burgers) and truffle french fries.... mmmm! Sunday, several of us met again at the Westwood Brewery, too.

I also met the lovely Mo who writes this cool blog: PINK ARGYLE

It was really awesome to meet a cool blogger in real life after meeting "online" in cyberspace! She was supercool and, like the rest of us, was MELTING from the heatwave! Foot in mouth

I also saw some good friends and their adorable kids and we had fun hanging out in the children's stage area.

So that was my fun Festival experience!

This past Monday, I had to drive to Santa Ana to give a presentation to the creative writing class at the Orange County High School for the Arts. It is in a tall building that used to be a bank! So it was very surreal to see all these hip teen students in two-tone punk hair and trendy outfits carrying French horns and guitars and singing in the hallways of what used to clearly be a very corporate building! I met the teachers for lunch at this cool hip restaurant called MEMPHIS. (The food was DELICIOUS!) I had arrived early, so for about an hour before my lunch meeting with the teachers, I stopped by a cool artsy coffeehouse called The Gypsy Den across the street and did some writing while I sipped on a delicious iced mocha. Then I met the students and they were soooooo smart and fun and asked great questions and were very talented writers. I was really impressed with them and I think we will have some very cool books being published in a few years by these great aspiring teen writers! The students here juggle a heavy workload of academic classes as well as their creative arts courses, rehearsals, performances, etc. It's a very impressive school. Grateful thanks to the OC High School for the Arts for allowing me the honor of hanging out at your cool school!

Check out the pics in the gallery below! Laughing