A.S. King visits Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor

Last night I had the privilege of attending the A.S. King event at Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor with a group of teacher and writer friends. It was by far one of the best author events I've ever attended. Amy is not only thought-provoking and entertaining, but she is downright hilarious too. She had our group of seven in the front row laughing so hard we were crying and snorting at the same time.

A.S. King snippets of awesome:

• Amy chose her author name because it spells out "asking" and also because she wants her books to be viewed as gender-neutral.
• She wrote her first four novels on a Swedish typewriter that had four a's on it.
• Every book she writes has a prologue out of sheer stubbornness. To mess with the people she's encountered who insist on never reading a book's prologue, Amy decided that every book she writes WILL have a prologue and unless you read it, you will be totally confused.
• Every book she has written has pieces of her life in them. Most recently, with Ask the Passengers, she does send love to the people up in planes.
• If you ever get a chance to meet Amy in person, ask her to tell the story of when she received the phone call telling her she had won a Printz honor. It's by far the best award phone call story I've heard from an author, like something out of a movie. 
• Based on the prologue that she read to us last night, Amy's newest book, Reality Boy, set to come out in October, is a "Go directly to the top of the TBR pile" kind of book. It's about the aftermath of being a child of reality TV and the implications that has on the main character's life as he grows up. Talk about thought-provoking and a commentary on our fame-obsessed society!

Amy reads from Ask the Passengers and Reality Boy

 Brian Wyzlic, Beth Neal, Stephanie Feldstein, A.S. King, Lindsay Grady, Sarah Andersen, Katelynn Grady, and me

It was such an awesome event that we stayed until the staff at Nicola's had to practically kick us out so they could close.

In between meeting Amy and practically getting kicked out of Nicola's, we did have another moment of awesome: an impromptu story time with Brian Wyzlic reading Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. We were pretty much rolling on the ground from laughing so hard. Brian is quite an expressive reader. I wish I had recorded it instead of taken pictures.