Photos from the 2007 National Book Festival

While I was quite disappointed with the Book Sales tent at the Festival (I really had my hopes up that there would just be stacks and stacks of books for super cheap, but alas and alack, this was not to be), I was not at all disappointed by Mr. Terry Pratchett.

Listened to him speak and do a question-and-answer session for about 20 minutes. At which point, Jenny and I decided that we should go get spots in line for our respective book signings (mainly remembering the fiasco of a few years ago, waiting for Neil Gaiman.) And what good timing, as we left just when a young man starting telling the story of how one of Mr. Pratchett’s book changed his life, complete with tears. Wow.

Got in line by 12:30. And then with the waiting. Luckily, the people in front of me were hella cool. (Hi Ari! Hi Chris!). We spent the next hour and change geeking out over Pratchett, Gaiman, King and more webcomics than I thought possible. I feared for nerd riots, though, when the event staff announced that there was going to be a second hour of signing, but it would require moving everyone in the various lines that had been set up over a couple of tents.

“This won’t end well” was all I could think. Luckily for our little group, we managed to get to the actual signing tent before any moving had to occur.

And I was this close to having random food scraps from an internationally-famous author in my copy of Sourcery. Seriously: Pratchett signed my book, grabbed his wrap, ate a bite of it, returned it to his plate, and then closed and handed me my book.