Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I'd Like to Shake Hands With

Yay, it's Tuesday! Time for Top Ten Tuesday hosted by the fabulous peeps over at The Broke & The Bookish! This week's topic is Top Ten Authors You'd Die to Meet.

Here's the thing though - I'm not the type that is dying to have convos with many, if any, authors. I wouldn't really know what to say, and I'd feel too awkward asking questions, if I could even think of good questions to ask. I'm the type of reader who would like to have an author sign my book, shake my hand, and maybe take a picture with me. But I'd just feel horribly awkward actually having like lunch with any of them, ya know? So these are the Top Ten Authors I'd Like to Shake Hands With.

1. Diana Gabaldon: She's the author of my most favorite series ever, Outlander. It's very unlikely that I'll ever be lucky enough to see Diana in person, since she resides in Arizona and what are the chances that she'll never come up north to my own little area of New York? However, a local bookstore in her town, The Poisoned Pen, allows you to request autographed copies of her books. You can have her personalize it and everything. They take the orders, and I think she comes to their store regularly to sign the books so they can be shipped out. I'm thinking of asking the honeyman to arrange a signed copy of Outlander for me for Christmas :-)

2. Christopher Moore: OK Chris Moore is probably the author I'd be most comfortable hanging out with, because he seems absolutely hysterical. His books never fail to make me laugh. Again, not likely that I'll ever get to meet him because I think he lives in Hawaii. But me and the honeyman want to move to Hawaii someday... and I actually have cousins that live there. So who knows, maybe I'll get my chance someday after all!

3. Jesse Petersen: She's the author of the Living With the Dead series that I've become oh-so-fond of lately. And I've actually had the honor of corresponding with her via email so that I could review a collection of short stories she's coming out with (In the Dead: Volume 1). Jesse seems like a really fun person, I'd definitely like to meet her IRL someday.

4. J.K. Rowling: Well duh. I don't have any deep, insightful questions to ask the queen of one of the best series ever. I'd just like to see her, maybe take a picture with her. She seems like a relatively private person anyways.

5. Jennifer Crusie: One of my favorite modern romance authors! I'd actually love it if me and my friend Doni could both meet her and take pics with her. And I might have to try to beg her to write another book about the Bet Me characters... I don't think I could resist.

6. Jane Austen: Well yeah, she's not living anymore. But it'd be cool to see her in today's world and her reactions to how skanky everything is nowadays.

7. The Brontes: Samesies for the Brontes, although they seemed a lot more open to the kind of wickedness that goes on today. I bet halter tops would come as a surprise to them, but they seemed to acknowledge that there's darkness and adultery and stuff in their world. Also, I want to see if Charlotte is really the snob I kind of think she is. And I really want to meet Anne, cause she's my fave. And I want to sympathize with Emily for only being able to publish one novel before she died.

8. Kristin Cashore: Dude, her books Graceling and Fire are AWESOME. And I follow her blog, and she seems like a cool chick. She takes trapeze lessons!

9. Patrick Rothfuss: His Kingkiller Chronicle books are ah-freaking-mazing. And his blog is kind of hilarious. I bet he'd be a really cool and laid-back guy to meet.

10. Sarah Addison Allen: S.A.A. takes the cake for magical realism novels. She was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, so besides the fact that it'd be cool to meet her, I'd also wish her well and hope she's feeling better.

Thanks to the digital age, it's possible to get in contact with almost all of these authors via their websites, blogs, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And as cool and awesome as that is, I would still love to be able to meet these authors and more face-to-face. (Well, except Austen & the Brontes cause I bet they're pretty much just dust right now and that'd be gross. But you know what I mean.) Hopefully I'll get to go to more book festivals and stuff in the coming years and get to meet some of these cool people.

Cause technology just can't replace real-life experiences.