Claire Legrand

Hi y’all! It’s been SO long, or at least it feels like it. I’VE MISSED YOU, INTERNETS. *GIANT CLAIRE BEAR HUGS*

I feel like a total failure for the past, oh I don’t know, two weeks? Three? I haven’t been blogging, I’ve barely been tweeting, I haven’t been checking in with ROW80 (BAD sponsor, BAD!), and it’s all making me a little PANICKY at this point. See, I went to Chicago to visit my dear dear Dr. Splanchett, and then I went to NYC for BEA, and this weekend I attended a family wedding and SLEPT and MORE SLEEPING YES. And there just wasn’t a lot of time in all that (and the preparation for all that) to stop and BREATHE, much less blog, etc.

But now I’m back.

And thank GOODNESS. Because I’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot to TELL y’all. Yesss many many things.

HIGHLIGHTS:

1. In Chicago, I performed THIS with my dear dear BFF, the abovementioned Dr. S. He played oboe (instead of the violin in the original score), I played piano, and one of his awesomely talented musician friends played alto flute. It was the encore of his FANTASTIC senior recital (which blew everyone away), and it was so fun and special for us to perform this together. The last time we performed together, he was still in high school and I was an undergraduate trumpet player, and we played Aaron Copland’s Quiet City. This time, we got to perform a track from the Firefly score, and, that being one of our favorite TV shows and something that means a lot to us, it was a moment I’ll treasure forever.
2. P.S. Seriously. You should listen to Quiet City. It is gorgeous.
   
3. BEA. WHOA. INSANE. SO MANY BOOKS. That was how I felt the first morning of BEA, when I met up with Agent Lady, Suzie Townsend, and the Fine Print crew. We lined up to get into the exhibit hall, and as soon as they opened the gates, we ran — RAN, like CRAZY PEOPLE — through the hall, following the route Suzie had explained to us all a few minutes before. “Do NOT fall behind,” she told us. “We will NOT stop for you.” Agent Lady added, “This is NOT the Army. We will leave you behind.” The gate opened and BAM! We ran. We ran through that exhibit hall and grabbed every ARC we could find. Publishers had them in towering STACKS by their booths, and oh how we PLUNDERED them.
4. SERIOUSLY. SO MANY BOOKS. On Thursday, the last day of BEA, I culled through the week’s haul (two giant boxes’ worth, mind you), and managed to end up with only ONE giant box, aka, 46 pounds of books, aka, HEAVEN. When this box of heaven arrives at home for me and the roomie to sort through, it will be like CHRISTMAS MORNING. Perhaps we will bake.
5. I met so SO many awesome people. For real. The publishing world is full of people like me! Like you! Like us! People who love books and obsess over books and pick apart books and cuddle books, and squee over beautiful covers, and are often more than a leetle bit crazy. And I was in a ginormous (seriously, it took up like five city blocks) convention center with THOUSANDS OF SUCH PEOPLE. Librarians and agents and editors and authors and book bloggers and booksellers and on and on AND ON. I shook their hands and geeked out over Game of Thrones with them and talked Dr. Who with them, and it was basically this MECCA of awesome, like-minded, slightly crazy-eyed (BEA is TIRING, y’all) people who love stories and storytellers as much as I do. That, my friends, is an AWESOME feeling.
6. People knew about my book. Seriously. And it doesn’t come out for another year! And if they didn’t know about it, they were totally nice and sweet and got excited about it with me. That was one of the strangest, most incredible, most HUMBLING feelings ever, to shake hands with someone and have them say, “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of this book, and I’m so excited to read it!” I mean…just wow. Also? SCARY. Will it be good enough? Will they love it? Will they be disappointed? ACK. NO. I will NOT follow that train of thought today, no way. *switches off self-destructive neuroses* *CLICK*
7. People on Twitter have FACES! And are REAL! It’s true. Crazy, right? Like, they’re in the Internets, but then they’re also in the REAL WORLD, and you can poke them! But seriously. I met Emilia Plater, Phoebe North, Kirsten Hubbard, Michelle Hodkin, Joanna Volpe, Brooks Sherman, Sean Ferrell, Dan Krokos, Kaitlin Ward, Kody Keplinger, Seanan McGuire, and Claudia Gray, all of whom are delightful and brilliant and some of whom I’d talked with on Twitter and some of whom I’d just stalked followed on Twitter, and I got to shake their hands! And hug them! And be like OH IT’S YOU THAT PERSON IN MY COMPUTER.
8. Speaking of, my roommates were AWESOME. I’d followed and chatted with Trisha Ziegenhorn and Denise Swank on Twitter for a long time, and they graciously allowed me to share a hotel room with them. They are amazingly sweet and talented ladies who were a whole lot of fun to hang out with, and did I mention they’re supermegatalented? Seriously. We chatted writing and WIPs, and trust me when I say that they’re pretty much gonna rock your faces off.
9. I met my editor! Who is lovely and wicked smart and just all kinds of awesome. Dinner with her and Agent Lady on my last night in NYC was nothing short of magical. And insightful! And entertaining. Mainly because we got to watch Agent Lady dissect and conquer a giant lobster. It was good times, y’all.

So, yeah. That’s where I’ve been. And as amazing and fantastical as all that was, I’m SO glad to be back! I’ve got lots of work to do, and I’m so inspired to do it. Being at BEA, in the fuzzy, adrenaline-soaked midst of books and authors and panels and MORE BOOKS, was terrifying at first. I thought, “Why am I here?” “I am SO not cool enough to be here.” “I am so not TALENTED enough to be here.” “I mean, LOOK at these people.” “Don’t talk don’t talk don’t talk, if you don’t talk, they won’t find out you’re a fraud.” ETC. ETC. ETC.

I still feel that, to be honest. It’s a terrifying feeling, to have my strange, scary little book still so fresh and new, being revised and poked at and prodded at, not knowing what the next year or so will bring, wondering if I can ever live up to the brilliance and talent of the other kidlit authors I met and gaped at like an idiot.

But BEA did show me that I’m doing what I should be doing. I should be writing. I should be a writer. I knew it before, but I often forgot it, or I convinced myself I was wrong and went cowering into a little sweating corner of self-doubt and anxiety. I’ll still do that, I know. That little sweating stinky lonely corner never goes away. But when I sat at the young adult and middle grade buzz panels, tearing up because I felt so inspired and humbled by the books being highlighted; when I got into conversations with bloggers and authors and editors and realized that, hey, I kind of know what I’m talking about here; when I connected with an author signing her book or speaking at a panel or whom I met on the floor, and got chills up my arms because we both GET it, we both GET words and writing and books and this crazy, all-consuming love of storytelling that makes us get up too early and stay up too late and forget to eat and eat too much and stay in when we could go out — I knew. I knew I was in the right place, that I’m doing the right thing, that doing anything else would be contrary to everything I am at my very core.

So, now? Now it’s time to work.

I’ve got a second round of Cavendish revisions to complete (God, I love this book). I’ve got a first draft of Cracked to complete (HEY LOOKIT I LOVE THIS ONE TOO). I’ve got a second MG to plan, potentially the beginning of a series (so so so excited about this newest project, I mean REALLY).

And I’m so ready to get started.

Thank you, BEA, authors, editors, agents, roommates, FRIENDS, for shooting me up with such crazy electric inspiration last week.

Thank you, lovely ROW80 peeps, for bearing with me while I was MIA. I promise, I’ll be back to normal with this Wednesday’s check-in.

And thank YOU, blog readers, Twitter friends, etc. etc., for just being your awesome selves. I’m so glad to be back! I’ve MISSED you! *MORE GIANT HUGS FOR EVERYONE*

And now, to unpack and clean. The author’s life is a glamorous one indeed, amirite?