A friend of mine, Stacee, runs this blog where she details her adventures in going to author events and getting books signed. I love reading it because I love going to events and getting books signed. And I guess I enjoy inciting the green burn of envy in my veins because I read all of her adventures, and the ones I really wish I was at, I read more than once.
Recently Stacee has branched out a bit a posted a review of a book and, just yesterday, her first giveaway. So I thought I would try posting a detailing of an author event they way she does. I even named this post the way she names hers because I’m that much of a copy-cat. Woohoo!
Shortly after reading the Golden Lily by Richelle Mead back in April she announced that she would be touring for it. Now, technically she doesn’t live that far from me (I’m in Vancouver, she’s in Seattle) so I knew if I didn’t make it an event there would definitely be more chances in the future.
But I really loved the Golden Lily and the whole Bloodlines series and Richelle hadn’t toured since I’d read all of her books and…well, I really wanted to see her.
But she wasn’t coming to Vancouver and I had JUST gone to Seattle twice for book events (well, Seattle once and then Bellingham once, but..I had crossed an international border to get books signed twice within the last month) and it was shortly before Comic Con so I had resigned myself to not going.
Then, oh happy day, a Vancouver stop was added! At my local bookstore! Woohoo! Two or so years ago my local Chapters never had any events and we would always go out to the awesome indie store (Kidsbooks. They are my favourite but they far away from me) for good events. But then my local big non-indie store (Chapters) that is ten minutes from my house started having all these fun events and it is much more convenient for me.
On the day of the event I woke to a DM from Natalie saying that Chapters was giving away the first five spots in line if you DM’d them a codeword from their Facebook page. So, I DM’d the codeword then realized they’d tweeted about this 11 hours before I woke up and the first five spots were probably gone.
I had planned to head down to the book store shortly before 11am but I ended up reading in bed longer than I meant to. Sidenote; Son of Poseidon was fantastic and I’m glad I finally got around to reading it. But local blogger Lindsay had tweeted that she was in line already so I wasn’t that worried about leaving right away.
Then, just as I was about to leave, the ChaptersBurnaby twitter account DM’d and said not only had I won, but I had won first place in line. Awesome!
Then I got to the mall, went to the bookstore, joined Lindsay in line and other local blogger Jenny. Jenny and I bought our copies of the Golden Lily and then we all sat around and talked about books for awhile. Which is probably my favourite part of these events. Other than getting my books signed and meeting authors. I love the long waiting in line with other book people. I’ve met a lot of friends/local bloggers that way and it’s always fun.
Chapters/Indigo always does a fun job with their big events. There was a DJ and a woman spray painting non-permanent tattoos. And I liked that to get a tattoo you had to donate money to a reading charity. I believe it was the Love of Reading Foundation. And it’s always so much fun to see so many young people turn out and be excited and over the top and have home made tshirts, about a book. You know? I love seeing people get excited about books. And there were a lot of them. I was near the front of the line so it was difficult for me to tell how many but a lot.
So then two of my friends came and joined us in line. And we continued chatting for awhile and got all of our books sorted out. And a little while after some other local bloggers, the girls from Muggle Madness, stopped by and we talked about more books. And just as the lady behind us in line was about to kill all of us, Calamity and Chaos went back to their spots in line and the bookstore staff called up the winners of the First Five Seats Twitter giveaway thing.
Jenny had also won a seat and we were the only two that came up when they called so we got seated first. I felt really, really bad for the two girls that had arrived at 9am to be the first in line. But they still had front row seats so, *shrug* it was too horrible.
The event was live streamed at Razorbill.ca and other than seeing a big camera in the middle of the seating area I didn’t notice it all. Which was nice. I’d been afraid that there would be technical difficulties and we would be interrupted but everything seemed to go smoothly.
Richelle came out in a nice dress and I was sitting directly in front of her which was a little disconcerting to be honest. I’m usually not a front row kind of person. I like second rows. Richelle read a bit of The Golden Lily then answered some questions, I don’t think I garnered any new information from the Q&A but I remember some of her answers being fun.
Then the signing! Because I was so early in line (I ended up being second) I didn’t take any pictures of the signing process. And then I was done and had to wait around for my friends who were about 15ish people back in line. While waiting I ran into someone from my book club further back in line which was fun. We chatted for a minute. And then I ran into Mariam, another local blogger and we chatted a bit.
About then my friends were done, they handed me my giant stack of books, and we went for frozen yogurt. All in all. An awesome day!
Don’t they look so pretty on my signed-books-shelf?