I'm HERE!

Come see me at 2:00 Sunday at the Boulder Barnes & Noble. 

St. Louis, be warned.  You and your county library are next!  (Monday night)

And Orlando, dude, you HAVE to go read this by Meg Cabot to get prepared for all the insanity that is heading your way next week.

Ally

Greetings from the road!  The GG4 tour is now in full swing, and I'd like to thank everyone who came out to the B&N in Glendale last night for a wonderful event!  It was so great to meet all of you AND hang out with overall awesome lady Melissa de la Cruz.

Did you miss us last night?  Well, never fear!  There's going to be a repeat performance at Vroman's in Pasadena this afternoon at 4:00. Come!  Come!  (That's an order!)

In other news...

--I used to be too cheap to order hotel room service, but considering I now know the breakfast delivery guy by name, I think we can officially say I'm over that.

--I used to be uncomfortable with valets (for reasons I don't know), I'm hoping I'm over that too since this town is all valet, all the time.

--It's cold here. 

--Everyone keeps saying it's hot.

--These people obviously don't know what hot is.

--Despite being like 80% mirror there is not a single good place in this hotel room to apply mascara.

--I HAVE to have mascara.

--One of these days I'm going to figure out why people keep asking about getting roles in the LYKY movie even though 1. I have stated about 9 billion times that there currently is no LYKY movie in the works and 2. I've also tried to make it really, really clear that authors have no role in the movie casting process.

--I'm really wishing I hadn't forgotten my pajamma pants.  (not that I can't sleep in my gym shorts.  It's just chilly sometimes in hotel rooms.  Plus, nothing says happiness like pajammas.)

--So far this tour I've only had pop twice and peanut M&Ms once.  I consider this the greatest diet achievement of my life.

--My college roommate who now lives in Denver just called to say she's setting up manicure appointments for us for when I get there (the city after San Francisco which is where I go next)

--Having friends along the tour route makes tour SO much more fun!

--Having great READERS along the tour route is the best thing of all!

Remember, I'll be in LA today, San Francisco next, followed by Boulder, St Louis, Orlando, Miami, Memphis, and Wichita.  Check out the details here and please come if you can!

--Ally

One of the best parts of this business is, without a doubt, getting to know other writers because most of them are smart, funny, and utterly, 100% made of awesome.

Case in point:  Sarah Mlynowski.

Back when I was very first considering writing YA (when Love You Kill You was barely a gleam in my eye), one of the first books I picked up was Sarah's Bras and Broomsticks and instantly it felt like coming home.  These were the types of books I was meant to be reading.  And maybe...just maybe...they were the types of books I was meant to be writing.

Now Sarah has a new book that examines one of my favorite things ever: what if.

What if you hadn't gone to that dance...

What if you hadn't answered the phone...

What if you hadn't slept through the alarm...

What would you life be like then.

And what would you do to change it?

In Gimme a Call Sarah's main character is thinking about those very things when she accidentally drops her cell phone into a wishing fountain and--boom--from that point on she can only call herself...or, more specifically, herself four years in the past.

Recently, Sarah and I were talking about our books and characters and we decided to play our own little game of what if.

Here's how it went:

1.   What if you had a magic cell phone?  What would you tell your younger self?
I would say, Hi little Sarah! Please don’t hang up, this is not a prank call. Once I convinced her that I really was Future Sarah I would advise her to stop over-plucking her eyebrows (she looks surprised in all her prom photos), to take up a sport (talking on the phone is not a sport) and to invest in Starbucks (instead of blowing all of her allowance on glamour shots).

Note to self: break into Sarah's mother's house and find those glamour shots!!

2. What if you were a witch, what would you wish for?
World peace. A cure for cancer. Naturally straight hair.

Note to self: remind Sarah that women around the world spend millions of dollars and hours trying to have her exact hair!

3. What if the Gallagher Girls and your characters existed in the same world?  How do you think our characters would get along?
 Yeah, Miri would loooove Gallagher Academy. Of course, Rachel would be furious that her little sister got accepted while she didn’t....although Rachel would probably be too busy crushing on Zach and Josh AND Hale to notice. And when Devi’s not using her magic phone to change her own past, she would be happy to lend it to Cammie to save the world.  Hmm. While the Gallagher Girls have the phone in their possession, would Liz mind taking a look at the battery? Devi can’t get it to charge and time is running out...

Note to self:  Go re-read Gimme a Call right away.

And that goes double for all of you!

Happy reading, everyone and thanks, Sarah, for stopping by!

Ally

Hey everyone!

As you all have hopefully seen by now I'm going on tour next week!  Look for me in LA, San Francisco, Boulder, St. Louis, Orlando, Miami, Memphis, and Wichita.  (Full list of cities, stores, dates, times, ect available HERE.)

Whew.  Did I get them all?  I think I got them all.

All of these signings are free and open to the public as far as I know, but please check the host store/location's website to doublecheck what their specific signing policies will be as they do vary.

That being said, however, one of the events is a little bit different, and before I leave I thought this would be a good time to talk about it.

As you might have noticed, the Orlando signing isn't at a regular bookstore.  Instead, it's the official signing that takes place at the start of the Annual Romance Writers of America Convention.  And instead of it just being me there will actually be about 500 authors in attendance.

Yep.  FIVE HUNDRED AUTHORS.  But don't take my word for it, you can to to this site and look over the whole list and see people like Melissa de la Cruz, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Tera Lynn Childs, Simone Elkeles, Diana Peterfreund and many, many more!

And not only that, but the signing is for a good cause too.  Every year, RWA donates the proceeds from the “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing to charity.  This year, your sales will benefit ProLiteracy Worldwide, the Orlando Adult Literacy League, and the Nashville Adult Literacy Council.

Again, there's no charge, but people who attend are strongly encouraged to buy books at the event if you can since, after all, it is all for charity. 

Doors open at 5:30 and close at 7:30 on Wednesday, July 28.  The signing will take place in the Pacific Exhibit Hall in the Walt Disney Dolphin Resort in Orlando.

I am so excited to be able to attend so many cities, and so grateful to my publisher for allowing me to do so.  Of course, I wish I could attend every city, but at some point I have to...you know...write more books, so we're stopping at eight.  If you'd like your city to be considered in the future, please discuss the possibility with your local bookstore and log your request here.

Thanks again, everyone, and happy reading!

Ally