Dessen in Denver!

Just got back from dinner following an awesome event at Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch with Sarah Dessen, on tour for her latest, WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE!

You all know about my Dessen-love from the early days, right? Well, in case you're new around here, let me tell you, because it's pretty simple.

She's the reason I write YA. Without her books, TWENTY BOY SUMMER and FIXING DELILAH wouldn't exist.

No, really. Her books THAT SUMMER and SOMEONE LIKE YOU, which were combined in the movie tie-in edition called HOW TO DEAL, were my first YA reads as an adult (because at the time, I was like, hey, two books for the price of one, with Mandy Moore on the cover? Sweet!), soon followed by Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK and Deb Caletti's THE QUEEN OF EVERYTHING. After that, I knew I was born to write for teens. These lovely ladies are like my trifecta of fangrildom, and now I can honestly say that I've appropriately (or maybe inappropriately) fangirled all three in person. All that and I got to eat something called "adult mac-n-cheese" for dinner and bring home a whole container of chocolate chip brownies from my friend Meredith. Now I'll spend the next two days reading Sarah's WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE, turing pages while alternately jamming brownies into my mouth.

Do you realize what this means? That even if the world ends next Saturday like all those crazies keep saying, I can go out with a smile and a sigh, because my life will be complete.

How can your life be so complete, you ask? Well, I can't send you brownies, but tonight I snagged an extra autographed copy of WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE for one lucky reader!

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment here and tell us about a time you had to leave without saying goodbye. Take it as literally or as figuratively as you'd like — maybe you had to rush home after a party, or you got into a fight and stormed out, or you forgot. Or maybe you found yourself at a new place or a new part of your life and realized you never really let the old part go. Or maybe you ate the last brownie only didn't know it was the last brownie, and your spouse was all, "I can't believe you didn't save me any brownies!" and you were all, "What? I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to that last brownie, and now they're gone!" Not saying that the last one's a true story or anything… just for illustrative purposes… *anyway*

Enter your comments below for a chance to win, and if you tweet, blog, or Facebook about the giveaway, mention that in your comments and I'll give you an extra entry. Fine print: autographed book does not come with brownies. I can probably add some brownied fingerprints though, if you ask nicely.

Thanks again to Sarah Dessen for being so gracious in the face of my nervous and possibly borderline stalkerish babbling, and thanks as always to Jinx, Mickey, and the wonderful staff at Tattered Cover who make reading and writing in Denver so impossibly great.

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