The next panel event I attended was an author chat with Meg Cabot and Melissa de la Cruz. I’ve already talked about Cruz, so I’ll talk a bit more about Meg Cabot.

Cabot wrote The Princess Diaries, the Airhead series, the Abandon series (which almost stopped me from getting published, but that’s another story), The Avalon High series and a ton of other middle grade, YA, and adult books. She’s impressive. I didn’t get as many notes from this one because there wasn’t enough room. Meg Cabot talked a bit about working with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. Mostly she talked about her new middle grade series, Diaries of a Middle School Princess, though she did touch on the Airhead series, which made me happy. Most of the panel featured the writers answering questions from the crowd. It was really precious watching the little kids try to articulate their questions when they were so star struck! But I was most impressed with how much time and attention Cabot and Cruz gave each question. They were so sweet and so respectful and so kind. It was just really heartening to watch.

I got a wristband to get Cabot’s autograph, but every time I stopped by her line it was an hour deep, so I opted to go to panels instead, because while signatures are awesome, just listening to all these writers talk about their process was just amazing to me. Plus it was great exposure to new books.