I met Jay Asher on Saturday.

He was at Best of Books in Edmond as part of his 50 States Against Bullying tour. I blogged earlier about it, because, HELLO, New York Times bestselling author Jay Asher in Oklahoma?

YES.

So we had our Oklahoma City SCBWI January critique-a-thon that morning, at a member’s beautiful, perfect house (thank you, Christy)! And afterward, some of us hurried to the bookstore – less than a mile away! How destined was that?

So we got there early and got numbers for the signing. I got #4. Sweet.

Then Jay came in. I retreated to a corner, so I could stare at his writersly perfection without being too scary. Some of our SCBWI Oklahoma members were together, talking like normal people and being cool. I relocated to their midst and pretended like my palms weren’t sweaty.

Jill, our assistant regional advisor, went and introduced herself to Jay because she’s awesome like that. Then she brought him over to meet us.

I remember very little of the words that led us up to this point. I do remember Jay saying that we should stand under the regional sign (because SCBWI is broken into regions). I also remember him commenting on my t-shirt, which has the Ghostbusters car following Inky and Blinky from Pac-Man on it. This was an actual thing that happened.

Ahem. So, then he spoke to us about the stories behind his novels, and his road to publication, and that was really interesting. Gave me a lot of good ideas about writing, and about patience (of which I have very little, it seems.) Afterward, we got in line, and I had him sign my copies of 13 Reasons Why and The Future of Us, plus my nephew’s copy of 13 Reasons Why. I had to buy new stuff for myself because I only had it on kindle. Stupid, stupid me.

While he signed my multitude of books, I blathered about my own writing, my blog, my twitter, and probably a bunch of other things. I thought I was playing it cool…but probably not. He was so nice though.

And then my wonderful friend Catren offered to take a picture of us.

Jay posted about his trip to Oklahoma on his blog! It includes a link to video of his appearance on News 9, his thoughts on the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, and pictures from his visit to Santa Fe High School.