Sofia, Rick Riordan says "Hi"

I planned my conversation.

Introverts will know what I'm talking about. When I know I'm going to have a conversation with someone whom I don't know very well, I do better if I can think up some things to say ahead of time. Extroverts must think this is strange. They never have time to pre-plan a conversation because they're too busy engaged in their current conversation. Natural-born gabbers, those extroverts are.

Tonight I drove to a Barnes & Noble in Mesa where Rick Riordan was signing copies of his books. Rick Riordan is the author of the Percy Jackson series. Sofia's 5th grade class read the first one together, The Lightning Thief, as they studied mythology. Sofia loved the book so much she talked me into reading it. I thought it was great too. Each year after that, Rick Riordan has written another one, and his following has grown and grown. In promoting the last book which was released about a month ago, Rick Riordan is doing book signings across the country. We had already booked the tickets to Costa Rica when we found out he was going to be in Mesa on June 19, 4 days after Sofia left the country. Luckily, I'm still here so I could take her books and get them signed. I just got home and here's what happened.

The signing started at 6 pm, so I left the house around 4:30. It took me about 30 minutes to get there, thanks to rush hour traffic. The bookstore was about 18 miles from our house.

On the way, I wondered if it would be crowded or sparsely attended, or somewhere in between. You never know. I'm reading a book right now by a famous fantasy author, Terry Brooks, in which he talks about his life as a writer. He says even since he's become famous he never knows what kind of crowd will show up to a book signing. While promoting his novelization of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace a few years ago, he went to a sci-fi conference and signed thousands of autographs and the next week went to a signing that hardly anyone came to. So you never know.

As I pulled up, an hour before the signing, I saw a sizable crowd. Looked like this was going to be well-attended. That made me happy for Rick Riordan and the series, but a little bummed for myself because I knew I'd have practically no chance of talking much to him. Hey, I just said I planned my conversation, I didn't say I didn't want to have one.

A table outside the store was handing out tickets. They would let people inside based on what ticket you had. They started at A. I got S. An hour early and I got S. I had no idea how many tickets they gave out for each letter, but I did overhear that some people had arrived at 9 am to get their ticket. Wow.

They put stickers on my books (so that they'd know I'd brought them and not just grabbed them off the shelf) and wrote the number of books on my ticket. They said Rick would be speaking to the crowd at 6 before the signing.

With ticket in hand and 45 minutes to kill, I figured I'd better grab some dinner. It didn't look like I'd be getting out of here any time soon. Just down from Barnes & Noble was a Pei Wei, so I ate there. While eating alone, I had a strange moment of uneasiness. Usually I'm perfectly fine being alone, but this time it just felt wrong. Maybe it's because we've always gone to Pei Wei as a family. Maybe it's because I'd seen so many parents with their kids there for the book signing. I really wished at least Sofia had been with me.

A little before 6, I got my video camera from the car and set up in a spot where I could get him speaking. It gets a little shaky at times because I was holding it over everyone's heads. But it's okay.

After the talk, the real waiting began. I'm glad I hadn't finished The Last Olympian because that gave me something to read while I waited (I'm on page 255, Sofia).

The S's finally got called around 8:40 (about 2 and half hours after the signing started). The Barnes & Noble people, to their credit, were incredibly efficient. They led us inside the store, snaking us around till we were at the signing table. Then a few helpers prepped the books. The first man asked which one I wanted him to personalize (only allowed one). I couldn't remember what Sofia had said, so I went with The Lightning Thief. So the man put that one on top and tucked all the book jackets so that the books would open directly to the title page, where he would sign. Then the next girl in the assembly line asked what the person's name was for him to sign it to. She wrote Sofia's name on a post-it note and stuck it on the title page. Then the last guy, right at the table, nested all the books inside each other, so that he could just sign--boom, boom, boom--without having to open each book. It was amazing.

I noticed that the girl who wrote Sofia's name, even though I said it was spelled with an "f," wrote it so fast that the "f" looked kind of like a "p."  I was nervous that he'd write it with a p, so when I got up to him, here's how the conversation went:

Rick: Hi!
Me: Hi! That's an "f," by the way.
Rick: Gotcha.
     (He scribbles his name in each book with a Sharpie.)
Me: These are my daughter's. She's a big fan, but she's out of the country right now. She was very sad she couldn't be here.
     (He's done with the books now and slides the stack to me, while I'm scrambling to take a picture or two)
Rick: Well, tell her I said hi.
Me: I will!

All my wonderful conversation topics that I had planned--about how I too am an English teacher, about how my daughter has gotten some of my older, inner-city kids to read and love Percy Jackson, about how great it is to see all these hundreds of kids here crazy about books, about whether or not he had read the screenplay and whether they were combining books into one movie--there was no time for any of them. "Tell her I said hi." Good enough. Pretty classy.

And then I came home. And here are the pics:

Those are Sofia's books on the right that the helper is prepping.

Sofia's books.

Those are Sofia's books in the stack in the lower right corner.  He was already signing the next person's by the time I got this picture to take.

Mission accomplished!