#nttbf17

Yesterday was probably the best day of my life. I seized the opportunity to attend NTTBF (North Texas Teen Book Festival). I got to meet @vaveyard , and @theartofnotwriting  This was a day that I marked so much off my bucket list!

 Veronica Roth, how can I put it into words? Her books were my safe haven, a place I could go when things got bad. Her books were the first ones I ever got serious about. 

 And Victoria Aveyard... (@vaveyard ) I cannot say enough. Red Queen was one of the books that I loved more than any other. Her and SJM will forever be my favorite authors and who I aspire to be! Meeting Victoria was the most amazing moment of my life. She was so kind and beautiful and I wish I had more time to thank her. Thank her for writing these books that made the darkest parts of my life brighter, these books that had me speechless. Thank her for bringing me joy and inspiring me to start writing myself, she launched my dreams to become an Author and she is one of the most influential people in my life. Words cannot do her justice. She is truly amazing.

I’m a teenage poc, a girl, and bisexual. I went to a certain panel with the authors, without knowing that it was the lgbtq+ panal. And so when it was introduced, I was kind of amazed. I mean, I was beyond amazed. There were about six authors there, of those included e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, David Levithan, Adam Silvera,  Benjamin Alire Sáenz, and two others. And from these authors, I realized some things.

1: Being queer doesn’t change who we are. It doesn’t change what we like, what we dislike, and how we act. It doesn’t changed us. It just helps us accept who we are more. And that’s the most important thing. Being happy and in love with ourselves is the most important thing.

2: People of color aren’t very widely shown as authors. Memoirs, yes. Fiction novels? Not so much. But here I get to meet a Latino man who was gay, who had written an amazing book that many people had fallen in love with. And all I can think about is, yes. This was a 62-year-old man who had come out of the closet at 53. And it shows that it’s never too late. He was a man of faith, from having been a preist for a while, and him coming out as gay didn’t change that. In fact, he apologized for the things that he had heard that some people in the Christian faith had been doing.

3: There is always a place for people like me. Whether it’s bisexual issues or me being a girl, or me being a poc, there will ALWAYS be a place for me. Whether it’s at school, at a book fair, by myself, on a chat, there will be somewhere where I will belong. Not because someone shows it to me. But because I KNOW. 

4: If you find intolerance, like from, per se, Donald Trump, don’t be afraid of it. If someone doesn’t like the fact that what you’re writing is Gay, or that a character is Bi, or two girls like each other, or they like no one at all, don’t stop writing. Don’t stop! Who cares what other people think? This is your story! You write it! And if they don’t like it, well oh well. Write it anyway. Make it a huge middle finger towards them. Because their intolerance, their hatred towards it, doesn’t amount to much. And it never will. If they write a huge long paragraph about your story, isn’t that kind of amazing? As a writer, you want to evoke emotion from the reader. Anger is an emotion. They could kiss our ass, because we got a response, and that’s exactly what we wanted.

I had a brief talk with e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, and if I’m going to be honest, I wanted to cry. Here was this person who had gone through  a conservative family, and now wants all of us, all of us kids in the LGBT community, to not feel alone. They wanted us to be happy, to have somewhere where we deserve to be! Not because someone allowed it, but because it has always been welcoming to us, and always will be.