Meeting People

This morning, I gave a talk to a group of students at the school where my step-father works. The class was called "life-skills," and the students were all part of the special education curriculum. Basically, I spoke about what it means to be a writer. I have to say it was pretty awesome.

I was nervous at first, mostly because I haven't really done too much of this sort of thing yet. A couple weeks ago, I participated in a Teen Advisory Group run by my friend Anne at the New York Public Library. But other than that, I haven't really gotten up in front of a group of young people since I did children's theater after college. Ah, the memories. Still, performing in a play for kids is majorly different from actually talking about yourself and what you do for a living.

Today, I was impressed with my audience. They paid attention and asked questions and seemed generally interested in what I had to say, which is pretty cool considering that none of them had read my book, or even heard of me before that class. They wanted to know about the cover art, and the titles of my other books, and if The Stone Child is going to be turned into a movie... Ha. I told them that I wouldn't mind if it is.

I'm looking forward to doing more of this kind of thing in the future... Gets me psyched. Helps me remember why I wanted to do this whole writing thing in the first place.

Cheers!