In a few hours I'm jetting off to LA for the LA Times Festival of Books, and am so delighted I don't know what to do with myself.

http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/

This is the last official stop on the US tour for Monsters, which has been utterly fantastic, save for the part where I swamp the world and my conscience with my massive carbon footprint, and for the fact that I am just, frankly, pooped. I have loved, loved meeting all the people I've met--especially all the rocking independent booksellers of the world, who really keep up my faith in the future of books.

This festival is especially awesome because I get to see all of the writers on whom I have a ridiculous crush (Junot Diaz! Per Petterson! Jean Valentine! Tom Bissell! Padma Lakshmi! and on and on and on and on).

Here's the schedule:

Friday, April 25th
Ladies Who Lunch Series Author Lunch--(Doors open at 11:30--will go to at least 1:00; at the Belamar Hotel) This is a benefit put on by my awesome friends at Mysterious Galaxy Books for Writegirl , an utterly inspiring group of women who mentor young ladies who are interested in writing.

(Random aside: when I was the girls' age, I had never met an actual writer, and so believed that they were fairylike creatures who were out walking one day when a massive hand that came down from the sky and blessed their beautiful heads, thus allowing them to be that rarefied and wondrous creature that actually got to write books. Though I adored books, I didn't really believe that I could do it, myself. It would have been a major help to know that writers are actually real people, with acne and belly-fat, who are able to do what they do because they work really, really hard, and not because they are the muses' chosen folks. So: thank goodness for WriteGirl. Had it been around when I was a teenager, it would have saved me years of angst).

The $75 ticket includes lunch and a book--I think it's a badly-needed benefit, and will be giving a talk and maybe a little reading, too. I think there still be tickets available--contact publicitymg@gmail.com to see.

Saturday, April 26th
11:00-12:00--Signing at the Mysterious Galaxy booth at the LA Times Festival of Books (Booth #614, Dickson Court North).

Sunday, April 27th
2:30-3:30ish--Panel Discussion: "Fiction: Finding Truth in Imagined Places"
I'm so excited about this panel because I get to sit beside Kevin Brockmeier (who is absolutely one of my favorite young writers--his Brief History of the Dead ruined me as a writer for six months because I kept trying to write a mythical-metaphorical-apocalpytic story and am not as good as he is), James Howard Kunstler (whose World Made By Hand rocked my world when I read it in galley-form), and Gary Amdahl (whose Visigoth I really, really want to read). One needs tickets for the LA Times Festival of Books, but you can get them for a nominal service charge on Ticketmaster or at a booth on the day of the panels.

I have a few other private book club events/ family shindigs (I get to meet my cousin's daughter--who has the best name ever, Adelaide Buttercup--for the first time, and I can't wait).

If you are planning on coming to the LA Times Festival, please stop by and say hello!