Express Yourself: Author Luncheon!

Good morning!

Welcome back to the weekly meme Express Yourself, brought to us by Jackie @ Bouquet of Books and Dani @ Entertaining Interests. This week's question is What author would you want to share lunch with.

This question KILLS me because I HAD THE CHANCE!!! to eat dinner with my favorite author and couldn't because of the stupid bus schedule! D:<  I started reading Robert Olen Butler because of a short story anthology we were reading at FSU. I hadn't thought much of the story when I read it, but then we watched him read it (because he wrote it live!) on Inside Creative Writing. And I fell in total and utter fangirl love, reading everything he wrote. He is actually a professor AT FSU, and had I stayed one more semester, I probably would have had him as a teacher and stalked him, so there but for the grace of God go I. lol

So, anyway, I built up the courage to ask if I could stop by his office so he could sign Had a Good Time for me. That was when he said he has dinner with his students before class and invited me to come! BUT I lived on the other side of town, so I wasn't able to make it. *sob* So I had to settle for getting there to wait for him to get to his office. Oh my God, when he stepped out of the elevator, I almost screamed like he was Michael Jackson. lol But I kept my cool and went to his office, said something stupid about his afghan on the wall (called it a rug) and smiled happily as he signed it. One of the best days ever.

If you have a chance, read some of his work. He was in 'Nam, so he has many stories written in the eyes of soldiers or Vietnamese citizens, and they're just so beautifully written. He's also put out his first thriller The Hot Country, and I couldn't put that down!

So he is for whom I would turn back time to go have lunch with. :) That's an awkward sentence. Ah well.