Scott Westerfeld at Shorecrest Performing Arts Center.

Today our intrepid band of STABies (Myself, my lovely wife Gail, Natalie, Molly, Leslie and Roxana) visited the Shorecrest PAC to hear Scott Westerfeld speak. Scott Westerfeld is the author of a number of books including So Yesterday, the Uglies Trilogy (Uglies, Pretties, Specials) and Peeps. His new book, Extras, is the 4th book in the Uglies Trilogy (Huh?).

Natalie was on crutches and we tried to use this to our advantage, like to get better seats or jump the line, but to no avail. About 100 people were scattered over the auditorium and a group of not very boisterous librarians I knew sat behind us. Mr. Westerfeld spoke quite extensively about his books and where his ideas came from. For example, the inspiration for Uglies came from a trip a friend of his took to the dentist. He also discussed his new book, Extras, and how it started out with the idea of what it would be like to know your Myspace/Amazon rating instantaneously and if it were based on more than just hits and sales figures. Most of talk was based around questions from the audience. And I have to say, this crowd seemed a little more educated than the one at the Stephenie Meyer lecture I attended earlier this year.

Mr. Westerfeld was very gracious and signed our books. I also had him sign a copy of Peeps that he had already signed. This time I had him make it out to STAB for our group. (Next time you are in, ask to see it and gaze at it's glory.) He, however, did not remember me from our encounter we had at the ALA conference in New Orleans in 2006.

Afterwards we, (the STABies without Scott Westerfeld) went to local fast food drive thru and had frozen "dairy" products and I used a coupon. If was a lot of fun and, I hate to break this to you, you really missed out if you didn't go.