As some of you may have noticed, I was at TeenCon2015 yesterday, which is a part of Sydney Writers Festival.
Painting my Support Team Jamie poster
I started preparing on Saturday, with a big blue piece of cardboard and some yellow paint.
As it turns out, yellow paint on cardboard appears green.
About 10 coats of paint later, the sign was looking adequately yellow.
And then came Sunday, and the journey toward TeenCon began.
Our trip started well, missing the train by a mere minute (I blame trackwork, which required us to go to a less familiar station). After missing the train, instead of having a full half-hour to find the venue, we had 10 minutes.
It took us half an hour.
Nevertheless, we eventually arrived, Team Jamie sign in tow, and ended up with seats…though not ones with an amazing view…
There was a pole in my way
We had arrived during the bloggers panel, in which four popular booktubers were discussing various bookish things.
You don’t fall in love like you fall into a ditch
After the bloggers, the publisher people got up to tell us books that we need to read now, and books we need to pre-order now. Some of the books mentioned were:
(out now)
Red Queen, by Victoria Aveyard
Shadows, by Paula Weston
A Thousand Pieces of You, by Claudia Grey
A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
Spark, by Rachael Craw
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
(coming soon)
The Rest of Us Just Live Here, by Patrick Ness
Risk, by Fleur Ferris
The Sacred lies of Minnow Bly, by Stephanie Oakes
Illuminae, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Stray, by Rachael Craw (Spark book 2)
And then it was time for the Book Boyfriend Battle, in which each publisher had 30 seconds to talk about their two nominees.
Boyfriends nominated were:
Allen and Unwin
Tarver, These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Chris Merrick, Storm by Brigid Kemmerer
Bloomsbury
Chaol, Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas
Arin, The Winner’s Curse series by Marie Rutkoski
Hachette
Park, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Edward Cullen, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
HarperCollins Australia
Four, Divergent by Veronica Roth
Josh, Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
Penguin Teen Australia
Augustus Waters, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Dimitri Belikov, Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
Random House Australia
Cam, Fallen by Lauren Kate
Adam Wilde, If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Scholastic Australia
Peeta Mellark, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Sam Roth, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Text Publishing
Rafa, Shadows by Paula Weston
Tiny Cooper, Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Walker Books Australia
Jamie, Spark by Rachael Craw
Jace, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
’twas time for the Jamie sign to shine
Most unfortunately, Jamie did not win. Instead, the winner was
With Chaol and Four coming close second and third.
After the Battle, it was time for TeenCon to end, which meant BOOKS!
Books obtained:
Risk, by Fleur Ferris (extract)
Hidden, by Marianne Curley
Dumplin’, by Julie Murphy
The Astrologer’s Daughter, by Rebecca Lim
We All Looked Up, by Tommy Wallach
Lifespan of Starlight, by Thalia Kalkipsakis
State of Grace, by Hilary Badger
Cooper Bartholomew is Dead, by Rebecca James
And PRETTY BAGS that the books were in.
After TeenCon, some of us stayed behind to chat. I got a picture with the wonderful Claire:
And got to (finally) meet some people who I had only met via twitter.
Which was a lot of fun. We talked about books and…books.
My kind of party.
It was around 9pm when we began the trip home. I reunited with my travelling companions, and we got on a train towards the station.
However, I was to learn that my night was not yet over. As we passed through Central, I had an epiphany:
I had Chemistry homework due Monday morning.
1. All Our Yesterdays, by Cristin Terrill
This one had a lot more deliberation attached to it. I almost bought it several times after reading the first chapter in the store…in the end, I got a free copy at PTALive.
The Magical Adventures of Cassie the Weird 