Librarians rule.

Above: The Alex Awards. Three of the honored authors made it to the con. I'm sitting far right.

Just returned from the big American Library Association convention in Chicago, where I was paraded out as a winner of a prestigious Alex Award for MFD, one of but ten books so honored and the the only graphic novel.

I spent all day Saturday at the con and signed copies for several hours at the Abrams booth. This is my last event of the year-long My Friend Dahmer book tour. It's been a blast, but time to buckle down and get to work on my next projects. Great way to end the tour. The Alex Award is a BIG deal in the library community and librarians have really championed MFD, especially to teen readers. To be honest, I didn't purposely write a YA (Young Adult) book. I'm not that clever. I simply wrote the book I wanted to write. That it became a YA hit is a happy accident! MFD has plenty to interest teens, of course: the depiction of high school society, adult indifference, adolescent dysfunction, the ways that teenagers treat other teenagers, bullying and... a serial killer.

All day long at the con, I had librarians rush up to me and tell me how much they loved the book. I get that at comicons, too, which is great, but these are pros. They don't come any more knowledgable and well-read than these folks. This was heady praise indeed! It's especially gratifying after a recent spate of Goodreads trolls, probably all belonging to the same I Heart Dahmer chatroom,  trashed me. Nothing I enjoy more than amateur reviewers with personal agendas and bad attitudes!

The main floor at McCormick Center. Yep, those are all Librarians. Not surprisingly,
despite their numbers, it was a very quiet crowd.