Author Event Recap & Giveaway: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Last night I had the pleasure of attending an author event and signing of Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff at Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, California. These authors traveled all the way from Australia to come and talk about their fabulous young adult Science Fiction story.  I loved their accents! Margaret Stohl was added last minute as a speaker to the event to speak about her Black Widow novel. 

Margaret Stohl, Amie Kaufman, and Jay Kristoff

It was a lively and fun event, and all the authors were fun and entertaining.  As a special treat Johnathan McClain, one of the narrators for the audio book read an excerpt which just happened to be the passage I just left off on before coming in the store. What a coincidence, lol!

Audiobook narrator Johnathan McClain

I'm currently listening to the audio version and I highly recommend it. There are three main narrators, but also a whole cast of secondary narrators and special effects.

Jay said writing Illuminae with Amie has been the most fun writing experience he's ever had.  They were able to get immediate feedback, bounce ideas off each other, and help each other out of writing dilemmas.

It's funny to note that both Jay and Amie are not well versed in the science behind the stories they write, but because they wanted their story to be authentic and believable they had a trusted astrophysicist go over all the science and make corrections when needed. They said they both took Hollywood's version of science as correct and found out Hollywood sort of writes it as they like.

Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman signing my copy!

As most of you know, I'm a happy ending kind of girl, so I had to ask Jay what he had against happy endings (as proclaimed in his bio)?!  He laughed, and said a happy ending must be earned.  It doesn't mean as much if the characters don't go through major turmoil first.  He used the example of the Star Wars trilogy.  The first movie (spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movies. And if you haven't, what rock have you been living under?!!) Luke fires missiles, explodes the Death Star and they all go home and get medals. The End.  That was nice, but in Empire Strikes Back they leave Luke, Han, and Leia in emotional turmoil and danger, and yet that was the movie that resonated with him the most.  When we finally do get the happy ending in Return of the Jedi, it means so much more because of everything the characters went through. Coincidentally, Empire Strikes Back is also my favorite of the trilogy, so I do understand his thinking on happy endings.

I had a blast getting a glimpse into the minds of Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff!  I'm currently reading/listening to Illuminae, and I have to say for someone who reads as much as I do it's refreshing to get a story in such an original format.  The story is told through emails, interviews, and messaging, but there are also illustrations.  I highly recommend getting a physical copy as opposed to an e-copy because of all the fabulous extras.  

As usual when I attend an author event I like to share with our readers, so I have a SIGNED Hardcopy of Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff to give away to one Readers Den follower.  The giveaway is open to US or CA residents only.  Simply fill out the rafflecopter below for a chance to win.

Author Event Recap with Sarah Alderson

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Sarah Alderson Event hosted at Birmingham New Street. I'd met Sarah last year at a blogger's event, but I couldn't wait to catch up with her again and see other fans of her work too. 

Sarah is one of the nicest people I have ever met, I've absolutely loved her work, and I tend to get super nervous about meeting and chatting with authors who I am huge fans of. Of course I got to the event early, so I ended up sitting in the front row. Sarah kicked off with a reading of her latest YA release Conspiracy Girl.

And then went straight into questions from the audience.

Sarah said that she sort of stumbled into writing, she hadn't planned to be a writer from a very young age.

Very exciting things are happening with the Hunting Lila film, they've narrowed the casting of Lila down to six actresses. Sarah wouldn't reveal anything about who these actresses could be. They're looking to cast Alex next week, they're going to film a scene with Alex and each of the Lila's and then decide on the chemistry between the actors. Sarah has asked to be able to be in the room when this scene took place, but it doesn't look like this will happen :(  Rachel has already been cast.

I was able to put my hand up and squeak out a question, which was who was Sarah's favourite male character from her books, her answer was Demos. I was sort of surprised that she chose him, but Sarah explained that there's so much more to Demos than you expect. And if you have read Sarah's Lila series you would understand what she means, as Demos is rather more complex than expected. 

Sarah's inspiration for her books came from travelling, which she's loved that she's been able to do.

Sarah was asked which of her characters she finds herself most like and her reply was Lila.

Sarah's favourite charcters from books she has read are Buffy and Katniss. She likes her kick ass females.

On whether there will be an upcoming third book in the Lila series, Sarah's response was that she was hoping to get to it once the screenplay for Hunting Lila kicked in. (I was super excited when I heard this!!)

Sarah's favourite cover from her own books is The Sound.

Sarah found that most readers chose Alex as their favourite male character from her books, she's written seven books and still can't top him. 


I had an amazing time at this event with Sarah, thank you to Birmingham New Street for having such an amazing author like Sarah do an event for us and Sarah for taking the time out for your fans (she was really great in chatting with all the readers who queued up to get their books signed). 

 

Author Event Recap & Giveaway: Gayle Forman

 

 On Thursday February 5th, 2015 I attended an Author Event at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California for Gayle Forman to mark the release of her newest book: I Was Here. I'll be giving away a signed Hardcover below so be sure to scroll down and enter the rafflecopter!

Gayle Forman

This was probably the most unusual author event I've been to, and I can't really say that Gayle's newest book, I Was Here, was discussed much. It was more of a girlfriend-gathering-free-for-all, as Gayle had her friends Deanna Kizis (screen & film writer) and Margaret Stohl (author of Beautiful Creatures & Icons) appear with her as guests up at the table.  

 Jorjeana Marie, Margaret Stohl, Gayle Forman & Deanna Kizis

Also in attendance was audio narrator for I Was Here: Jorjeana Marie who opened up the event with a scene read from the book. Her performance was amazing! I had to bite my lip so I wouldn't cry and my bookfriend and partner in crime, Arlene from Winterhaven Books almost cried too, which speaks to how intense and moving Ms. Marie's performance was, because Arlene NEVER cries!! :)  I'm definitely listening to the audio version! 

Audio book narrator Jorjeana Marie reading a scene from I Was Here

While there was mostly reminiscing about young friendship at this event, I did manage to find out a few little tidbits about Gayle's books:

• Gayle's inspiration for Willem in Just One Day & Just One Year was a Dutch boy who broke her heart. Aww...  

• Just One Day/Just One Year might turn into one movie alternating back and forth between Willem and Allyson's POV.

• Where She Went may not be made into a movie, dang it! I want Adam's story!

A Signed Hardcover Copy of I Was Here by Gayle Forman. Open to US Residents only.  Simply fill out the rafflecopter below for a chance to win. Good luck!

Author Event Recap & Giveaway: Becca Fitzpatrick & Christina Lauren

 

I (Rachel) had the pleasure of attending an author event for Becca Fitzpatrick and the writing duo known as Christina Lauren to launch their new releases Black Ice and Sublime respectively.  I read and LOVED Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick and I'll be giving away a SIGNED copy below. 

It was a fun event with the authors, each had stories of writing and inspiration that really captivated the whole crowd.  Here are some of the highlights:

Becca Fitzpatrick:

• Inspriations for Becca Fitzpatrick’s Black Ice are a missed Spring Break camping trip to the Tetons and a cheesy 90’s romantic suspense movie: The Companion.  The books plot has almost nothing to do with the movie, other than kidnapping and a mountain cabin, so don’t worry there.  She did eventually go back to the Tetons and hike some of the trail featured in the book.

• Becca decided on writing at the young age of eight when she watched the movie Romancing the Stone in which the heroine who is a romance writer traveled to Columbia, hunted for treasure, and fell in love with a tall dark and handsome man! She thought: how could you go wrong there?!

• In college she was sidetracked from this goal and instead wanted to be a spy. She applied to the CIA twice and never heard back. Their loss.

• Becca sometimes struggles with dialogue in a story. To make sure her teen dialogue is authentic she’ll sometimes go to movie theaters, coffee shops, etc, and eavesdrop on teen conversations.

• It took her five years of queries to sell Hush, Hush. Each time she’d work on it some more and resubmit. Her writing advice is persistence, determination, and hard work.

• Becca was asked if she had Drew Doyan’s phone number (The male model for the covers of the Hush, Hush series).  Lol! FYI: She does have it! 

• Becca had sold film rights to Hush, Hush sometime back, the screen play was written and she read it and liked it, but it just didn’t feel right. She’s a firm believer in going with your gut and it just didn’t feel right to go forward with the movie at this time. She let the film rights expire and they have now reverted back to her. At this time there are no plans for a Hush, Hush movie but that may change in future.

• Favorite books: The Summer I Turned Pretty series by Jenny Hahn because she felt exactly the awkward teen girl in the pages when she was growing up.

 Christina Lauren:

• Christina Lauren is a writing duo who met through writing fan fiction. They liked each other’s stories and so decided to collaborate.

• Sublime was inspired by: the Wordsworth poem, Lucy Gray about a girl who walks out into a snow storm and never comes back, the urban legend of The Lady in White and by stories of someone falling into a frozen lake and coming out intake after a long period of time. They compared it to Flatliners meets ghosts.

• The title of Sublime comes from the process of Sublimation where a substance is converted directly from a solid into a gas without going into the liquid phase. They were happy the publishers let them keep their original title.

• Christina Lauren’s adult book Beautiful Bastard has been optioned by Constantine.  They’ve read the script and love it. They had script approval, but beyond that they trust to the film makers.  As Lauren put it: They know how to write books, make a great quesadilla, but don’t know anything about making movies.

• Lauren said getting published is luck and a weird convergence of things. It's not enough just to write a great book. Writing a book of your heart that also happens to be on trend is a big factor. But write the book you’re passionate about, not what you think would sell, otherwise you'll never be happy with the work.

• Favorite books: Fobidden by Tabitha Suzuma, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, and anything by Stephanie Perkins.

I attended this event at the Huntington Beach, California Barnes & Noble and that place is huge! The YA section goes on for days:

I LOVED Black Ice so I had Becca Fitzpatrick sign an extra copy for one of our readers! The giveaway is restricted to US and Canadian Residents. Just fill out the rafflecopter for a chance to win.

Author Event Recap: Leigh Bardugo with Moira Young

Last week I was lucky to get the chance to attend the Leigh Bardugo and Moira Young event at Birmingham Waterstones High Street. High Street Waterstones have been having loads of great author events lately, I was lucky to meet Laini Taylor in May and now both Leigh Bardugo and Moira Young. 

The event was a question and answer session with both authors about their writing styles, problems they had experienced in the past and upcoming books. I was lucky again to attend this event with Jess from Jess Hearts Books and Rachel. 

Rachel, Jess and I being photobombed

Both authors were absolutely lovely ahd had a great sense of humour, there were many occasions where I was constantly laughing out loud. Here's a brief recap of the event.

Leigh Bardugo's new book will feature five different pov's

Leigh's series The Grisha Trilogy's has been sold to be made into a movie by Dreamworks and will be produced by the producer who made the film Gravity.

Moira Young has also sold rights for Blood Red Road to be made into a film and directed by Ridley Scott

 

Moira has a small critique group who has supported her. Moira likes to check back on what she has written on the day before. Sometimes she find description or detail of something that she has written before which she can use later on. Whereas Leigh doesn't like to look back at her previous days work.

Both authors were asked about death of characters in their books. 

Moira said she normally includes a death when it has a purpose or for a switch of momentum. 

Leigh always thinks whether death is the worse thing she could do to her characters. 

Moira's husband actually wrote a two page essay on why she shouldn't kill off one of her characters.

Leigh likes to revise her current read, whilst also writing her new book, whereas Moira only focuses on one book at a time.

When becoming a published author Moira did have a lot of good offers, but was waiting for the right person to come along. And then when she met her publishers to be she knew they were the right ones to sign up with. They also had a crow at the meeting too!

Leigh needs to know the name of her main characters before writing

Moira has been constantly writing since 2009 and said you need the occasional break to let you get back to it. 

Leigh is looking forward to reading Isla and the Happily Ever after and Sarah Rees Brennan new book.

Both authors were lovely enough to take time out to sign our piles of books. 

 

And take photos with us too!

There was also wonderful bookmarks, badges and postcards that we received from both authors. It was also a great pleasure meeting Nina from Indigo! I've been chatting with Nina through email and Twitter, so it was finally great to meet her in real life!

Event Recap: Blogger Tea with Mila Gray

I was thrilled to have been invited to a Blogger tea event with Mila Gray (Sarah Alderson) this weekend. If you've been following me on the blog or Goodreads for a while, you must know how much of a fan I have been of her work. Of course when it comes to meeting anybody famous, I tend to get super nervous, but as soon as I saw Sarah, she was quick to get rid of those nerves. I got a hug and a so nice to finally meet you Jasprit, it really is something when an author recognises you, especially one that you have admired for ages. 

 

We met with Sarah on the release day (at a select number of stores) of her NA book Come Back to Me. I'm not typically a fan of NA books, but Come Back to Me I loved, it was such a beautiful and heart breaking story and I was glad to meet other fans of this book there too. I met up with Jess and Donna from Book Passion for Life before the event, I've met with both ladies before, so was thrilled to know somebody else would be attending the event with me. We met up with Sarah, her publicist and other bloggers in this cool little cafe called Drink, Shop & Do. 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/drinkshopdo/events

We had our own little bloggers table, (around us there were ladies who had come in for hen do's and were making their own little sashes!), and were served with tea, gorgeous brownies, red velvet cake and sandwiches. I liked how informal this tea was, we were able to get to know other bloggers and of course chat with Sarah and get our books signed! 

I was also lucky to meet with Emma from Never Judge a Book by its Cover. Its always great to be able to meet with a fellow blogger, whose blog you've been following for sometime. Emma was absolutely lovely! I was also able to chat with Kirsty from the OverFlowing Library. 

Me, Donna and Emma.

Sarah was lovely, as she made the time to chat with all of us, we had fun chatting about her previous books, how she found it moving from writing YA to NA books, how much she was involved in selecting the covers for her books, travelling and of course Fifty Shades of Grey! Sarah was the easiest person to talk to, I felt like I was talking to a friend that I known for ages! The two hours that we had definitely went by way too quickly, but I'd never had as much fun at an author event as I had at this one! We also received a neat goody bag before we left. 

Thank you to Sarah, Catherine and all the wonderful bloggers, who made this blogger tea such a great one! 

                                  

Author Event Recap & Giveaway: Maggie Stiefvater

Last Tuesday I (Rachel) had the pleasure of attending an author event for Maggie Stiefvater at One Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose, California. As always she was lively and very entertaining.  Maggie led off with questions she asked the first time I saw her back in 2011: How many have ever seen me speak? How many have read...(this time Sinner)? How many of you have read any of my other books? How many of you have no idea who I am or why I'm here but saw a line going past the cafe?  The first time she asked this my husband, who attended with me raised his hand at that last question and I wanted to crawl under my chair! Lol! Anyways, thankfully, he didn't raise his hand this time!

Maggie signing the custom Sinner book cover

Even though Maggie hadn't planned on writing any more books in the WofMF series, she explained how Sinner came about with this line: "I am a werewolf in Los Angeles".  She said she thought if I

ever decided to revisit that world, that would be a killer opening line. She was deep into working on The Raven Cycle series which has very little *read: none* kissing because of Blue's curse, and when she thought of that line and the possible story, Maggie thought: that sounds like a kissing book! And Sinner was born. 

From there we heard stories of her college days in an Irish Celtic "rock band" (haha!). She was the bad ass chick playing the bag pipes!  And she regaled us of how she hated Los Angeles the first time she visited and then loved it the second time for the very same reasons, thus contributing to Sinner's setting.  

 

Guitar with Maggie's artwork

Being the last tour stop, there was a very special giveaway: a personalized electric guitar!  Also, she made custom book wrappers for Sinner and signed them for us! They are beautiful and evidence of Maggie's many artistic talents!  

Custom book cover for Sinner

It was a fun night, I laughed so many times! Maggie is one of the most entertaining authors to see in person I've met.

As usual I like to bring something back to share with one of our readers and I have a SIGNED hardcopy of Sinner to giveaway to one Readers Den follower. The giveaway is restricted to US Residents.  Simply fill out the rafflecopter below for a chance to win.

 

 

ALA Recap & Giveaway

Last week I (Rachel) was lucky enough to attend the ALA in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the fourth ALA I've attending but that still doesn't stop me from being star/book struck and I'm usually running around the aisles in a complete daze! I met up with my book friends-in-crime, Arlene and Crystal from Winterhaven Books and towed my husband along as well, and we had a great time chatting books and hanging out.

One of the great things about the ALA is the authors you see and meet. Just in passing I spotted Shannon Messenger, David Levithan, Laini Taylor, and Jessica Brody roaming the aisles. But I did catch these authors at signings:


Julie Kagawa signing Talon at the Harlequin booth:

Julie Kagawa

Holly Black at the Little Brown Books for Young Readers booth signing my copy of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown & The Darkest Part of the Forest. Love that she changes her hair color each time. Last year was blue and this year we get turquoise. She's always so very nice!

Holly Black

Markus Zusak signing The Book Thief at the Random House booth. This signing line was LONG!!

Markus Zusak

Jeaniene Frost signing The Beautiful Ashes at the Harlequin booth:

Jeaniene Frost

 Kendall Kulper signing Salt & Storm at the Little Brown Books for Young Readers booth:

Kendall Kulper

I really held back this time in getting books but here is the one's I'm most excited about:

Arlene, Crystal, my husband & I caught dinner at The Cheesecake Factory situated in this awesome shopping space, The Forum Shops in Caesar's Palace (picture below). I thought I was transported to a Greek Temple of some sort with all the gorgeous and elaborate fountains and sculptures! Of course the scenery quickly faded away when we started discussing books!

The Forum Shots at Caesar's Palace (click on photo for source)

Last but not least we dined at Javier’s in the Aria Hotel and I highly recommend the margaritas, food and dark atmosphere!

 

 Javier's at Aria

There were some amazing books at the ALA and of course I wanted to share a few prized finds: An ARC copy of Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater, Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers and Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas to one Readers Den follower.  The giveaway is open to US Residents only. Simply fill out the rafflecopter for a chance to win!