GUYS. WHAT A CRAZY SIX MONTHS THAT WAS.
The official stops of the Tunnel Tour are over! It's time to take a breath, relax a little bit, and look back at the awesomeness. And thank you, all of you who were such a big part of it.
Since January, I have:
--Had 18 (18!!) major events at bookstores or schools. I truly did cross the country, with events in: Butte, Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Santee, San Diego, Pasadena, Salt Lake City, Denver, Berkeley, Virginia, Nebraska, Portland, Missoula, St. Louis, Boston, and New York. WHEW. What did I discover? I love doing events. I KNOW. It's something I never would've guessed going in, but meeting booksellers and fellow authors and readers, and chatting with everybody and telling stories? Second only to the actual writing. Thank you so much to the bookstores, and those hard-working booksellers and customer service reps who helped organize this and ran them flawlessly.
--I got to hang out with 44 other authors!! Well, even more than that, because many of you fabulous people came who weren't actually on the panels. But I did events with 44 other kidlit authors, debuts and long-timers, my people to a one. THANK YOU, other authors, for sharing your stories with me.
--I did my first podcast, and 2 radio interviews, one with the renowned Cherie Newman of NPR's THE WRITE QUESTION. Oh my god, that was so much fun. You can listen to it all if you want to! http://www.susanadrian.net/mediaskype-visits/
--I did 4 school events, and would love to do more of these! The Best when you're actually talking to kids, and you SEE them get excited about stories and reading.
--I did blog interviews, all over, and I am so grateful to the bloggers who read and feature our books, and reach out to authors and spread the word. Thank you.
There are a lot of thank yous up there, right? That's the most important bit of this post, because none of this, this little "friend tour" dream I had the summer before publication, would've worked without the support of all the bookstores and authors and friends and readers. It would've been me, sitting alone clutching my book. Instead it was this:
And I loved every minute.
By the way, though the Tunnel Tour is done, I'm not going into hiding! I'll be at the Missoula Book Festival September 10-12, and the Montana SCBWI intensive September 18....
