June 23 - Richelle Mead

Yesterday was the last stop on Richelle Mead's tour for The Golden Lily. It's not the first time I've seen Richelle, I was at a writer's conference a few years ago and watched her speak about writing and urban fantasy and YA, but this is the first time I got books signed by her.

Like most signings, the set up was to have her read and talk, then answer questions, then sign books. I showed up a couple hours before the event started. I heard some girls showed up at 9am. Before the bookstore opened. Hardcore fans or what. I think I was about 12th in line (and was the end of the line for a good almost half hour), but then people started to show up around noon-ish and soon the line grew and grew. My guess would be between 100 and 150 people showed up, maybe closer to the high end. Less than Cassie Clare and Holly Black, more than Tahereh Mafi, maybe around the same as Marissa Meyer or the Smart Chicks Tour.

So, this is how close I was. How awesome. And no one was sitting directly in front of me. Weird. If the people who didn't get seats knew that, someone would've rushed up and taken it.

Richelle showed up looking all pretty. Curse you, authors and all your pretty. She said she was going to show up in jeans and her husband said, "You're going to another country, you have to look nice," or something along those lines. Pffft, we're not picky. ;) Then she read from The Golden Lily, a part from Chapter 12 when (plot point spoiler) Sydney and Adrian go to the self-defence class. So funny.

Then she answered a bunch of audience questions, some of which I tweeted yesterday but some I didn't. She knew there would be a spin-off series about halfway through the Vampire Academy series, she thought Sydney was interesting, and she knew Adrian would need his own series. She describes her writing style as very dialogue-heavy and full of pop culture references. There's going to be a Rose/Dimitri short story in an anthology soon and has to do with "prophecy." Her own desire to write keeps her writing, she'll look back at the books she's had published and feels happy, and she likes seeing readers and fans who make her want to write a better book. There's no movie news, but there's a production company trying to shop it around (the market might be a bit too vampire-heavy right now). She doesn't listen to music while writing, she'll get distracted by the lyrics, but listen to music when driving and thinking about the book is fine.

Her advice to writers is to write what you want to without caring what others might think and to keep writing every day because it can be hard to write again after taking a break. She always wanted to write, you read enough books and sometimes you get the desire to write your own, but she felt she needed to be older and a little disciplined before writing such a sprawling story like the Vampire Academy and Bloodlines series and her other series. She outlines the entire series so she knows how each book will end and how the series will end, then outlines each book meticulously. There was only one ending for Last Sacrifice, it didn't suddenly change halfway through the series. There aren't any characters based off people she knows, but she did once know a guy who dressed like Abe dresses. There might be similarities between Mason (from Vampire Academy) and Micah (from Bloodlines) but they're not secretly related or anything. And she brought Mason back to mess with Eddie's head. ;)

Then came the signing portion of the event. I only had two books with me, my copy of Vampire Academy and a copy of The Golden Lily that I bought there.

I looked through the pictures that one of the employee-helper-people took and I have the same pose in (almost) all of them. *sigh* Sad face. Stupid Lindsay, stop sticking your hand up into your neck.

Richelle noticed that my paperback copy of Vampire Academy has the old cover (before they invested some money in them, her words (how cheeky)) and I told her that when I bought copies of Frostbite and Shadow Kiss, the covers changed so I have two old covers and the rest all new covers. Oh, publishing. Don't ever change.

Thanks so much to Chapters for the event, for Penguin Canada for bringing her up here, and to Richelle for being awesome. :)