Got to meet my favorite author last night!

Last night I drove my mother and my other mother Amy and my other other mother Theresa to Westminster, MD, to hear Marisa de los Santos speak.

For those of you who may not know this already, Marisa de los Santos is my favorite author of all time. She has this rambling-but-spot-on way of describing a person, or a place, or a moment... and I love everything about it! She weaves her words together in these beautiful webs that rival anything Charlotte ever created, shimmering and glistening and perfectly articulated.

My very favorite part about last night was that Marisa recognized me when she was standing in front of her audience... and she waved! (That was my mom's favorite part too.)

My other favorite part was listening to her talk about her characters. It reminded me so much of my own characters, and at dinner afterward, Theresa commented on how listening to Marisa talk about her characters really helped her to understand the characters who live in my head... and how they actually live there.

There was another author leading the discussion with Marisa and his name was (still is, really) Matthew Norman. Funnily enough, the two have "known" each other for about a decade because they've been members of the same writers' group on Facebook, but last night was the first time they'd ever met. It sure didn't seem like it though! The two of them together was perfection. Matt is a riot. I mean, his delivery of just about every single line was laugh-out-loud funny and I am really looking forward to reading one (or all) of his books.

Here's my third favorite part of the evening: Someone in the audience asked about reading reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Both Marisa and Matt expressed that Goodreads can be sort of cut-throat and that they used to be sort of addicted to looking at reviews when they were first starting out, but they've since realized that it's not necessarily healthy to look at them. Matt pointed out that he can read a few reviews about his writing being genius, and that he can craft his words better than anyone else on the planet, and then he can scroll down an inch on his screen and read that he has zero talent and needs to find a new career. And then Marisa pointed out that Goodreads reviews are very different from Amazon reviews because someone on Amazon might say, "The cover of this book was bent when it arrived, so one star." I thought that was pretty accurate and funny.

I got off track there... The paragraph above leads into my third favorite part of the evening, but my third favorite part of the evening was actually this: In talking about bad reviews, Marisa said that she accepts that everyone has his/her own opinion and that she won't always please everyone, but that if someone like her husband or her friend Susan (I think it was Susan) were to ever say they disliked her book, she'd never get over it. And I brought this up at dinner because TWO of the women I was with (and one of them was NOT Theresa) have said that they do not like my one book AT ALL. And they've said this more than once. They are, in fact, adamant about how much they dislike it. (They are also wrong; a lot of folks really like the book I'm talking about.) So I was like, "See? I'll never get over that and I will absolutely never forget it." 😈

Overall, it was an absolutely fantastic evening. Also, there was something about Marisa de los Santos that made me remember the time Buddy and I went to see Adina Gewertz, who wrote Zebra Jungle. That was her first book, and I think it might have been also one of her first (if not her very first) author visits, and she was absolutely lovely! Afterward, I remember Buddy saying, "I could sit and listen to her speak all day" -- and that's how I felt about Marisa de los Santos! And Matthew Norman, too, because his voice is smooth and captivating and very enjoyable. And he's so funny! But Marisa and her glistening web of words? Her metaphors about sunsets and smears of jam? The fact that, as a kid, she kept journals of words that she liked and categorized them by "words that sound crunchy" and things of that nature? Yeah... I found her to be absolutely fascinating.

Oh! And I guess I should add that I got to meet her afterwards and she was sweet and kind and wonderful... but I wasn't expecting anything less!

Because Marisa's most recent book, Watch Us Shine, is pretty brand new, that was a focus of last night's discussion, and while I know many of you have not read it yet, here are some things that I loved about it for those of you who have read it. I'll try not to give away anything major, though, in case you wanna read this part of the blog and haven't finished the book yet:

• "Telling hard stories doesn't make them more real because they're already real. Telling takes the power away from them. It makes them yours" (72). For whatever reason, that really resonated with me while reading this novel, and even though Theresa pointed out that I've said a similar thing to her before, because my therapist said a similar thing to me, seeing it in print was kind of huge.

• Pages 72-75, when Cornelia tells her big story in one huge, rambling paragraph? Stylistically, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THAT.

• Piper's brief but necessary appearance. Because she is a shiny, pristine diamond in a tangled web of messy, messy characters... and I love her. I love that she is always right and she is always Piper and she always will be because she knows who she is.

• "I choose this one" (293). It made me miss my brother Pip so much because I'd give just about anything to play the choosing game with him again. I cried and cried and cried when I read that quote; I'm crying again now! In fact, I cried pretty much consistently from page 204 to the end of the book. I loved it. I loved this book so much. It is an absolute treasure.