If she wasn't so nice, I'd hate her.

Okay, so this weekend I signed at the Border's booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books which was a huge honor, even if it was nine billion degrees and I was sweating so much that when I stood up the front of my brand new dress was all wet. What I did not know until I got there is that I would be sitting next to Lisi Harrison, author of the New York Times bestselling series The Clique. It's not like I could tell you what I would've done had I known beforehand. I mean, it's not like I would have said "Oh, sorry, fine people at Borders, but I forgot that I had a previous engagement and won't be able to come sit at your booth." But when Lisi got there and I saw a) that Lisi was Lisi, bestselling author of The Clique; b) that she was tall; c) that she was skinny; d) that she was gorgeous; e) that she was hysterical; f) that she was self-deprecating; g) that she had a super cool and funky gold belt on and h) that there was a huge line of tweens waiting to get their books signed by her which not only did she do, but she did with so much warmth and humor, I almost wanted to crawl under the table in my brand new dress and hide. Which would have been difficult because it's a very colorful dress and sooner or later someone would notice me under the table and wonder what I was doing.

Anyway, I didn't hide. Instead I introduced myself and told her that I worked at MTV which is where she worked before she left to work on The Clique books full time. And so we talked about that, and about how hot it was, and she told me she liked my dress. So not only is Lisi Harrison a very good and prolific writer but she's also just all-around cool and sweet and someone I'd totally want to eat lunch with at the MTV cafeteria but that's not going to happen seeing that a) she no longer works there and b) she lives in California now and the cafeteria I'm talking about is in New York.

Oh, and then she gave me a very good piece of advice which wasn't about writing or book signings or anything like that -- it was something she learned from Tyra Banks which is that when you're getting your picture taken, say "Hey" instead of "Cheese" because it makes you look prettier.

So this is us saying hey.