I had heard all sorts of good things about Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena. When I saw that Lauren Oliver was signing, I was all over it. Add Claudia Gray and I was set... I ordered the books through the website with a note that I would be picking the books on the day of the event.
When we got to Vroman's, I was instructed to go to the will call section upstairs. The woman who helped me, Mary, was extraordinarily nice. She even offered to hold my ginormous bag of books behind the counter so I could go to lunch without lugging it around.
We got back to the bookstore around 3, and of course Nicole was there. :D I spent the time facing my books, writing my post-it's and chatting up the other people for the signing. Vroman's has an area devoted to signings and it was already set up with seating and balloons.
The three authors came out just after 4. A woman from Vroman's did a brief introduction and gave the background for each. And then each author went further into their background, including their stories.
Dan started his introduction by telling the audience "You're Welcome". He then stated that during their flight from Atlanta, they had to make a stop in New Mexico because there was a very sick woman passenger who needed to be removed from the plane. The 3 of them were certain she was Patient Zero and they were infected with the virus [that the audience was now going to contract] which was going to kill off the population.
All 3 authors are animated, funny and so so so charming. They give fun answers to the questions given. The Q&A lasted for about an hour. They answered questions from "what's your favorite book" to "what are you working on now" to "how to do write a believable romance between two characters". They even threatened the audience with singing if the questions stopped before they were ready. Apparently, the 3 of them sang the theme to
The Love Boat and
The Time Warp at other events, but none of them could remember why.
Admittedly, I didn't read the books before the signing started. I was planning on reading
Delirium, but heard there was a horrible cliffhanger, so I decided to wait for
Pandemonium. Now I've learned that Lauren [as well as Claudia and Dan] loves writing cliffhangers, so I was advised by other people in attendance that I should wait for the final book.
I did read
Evernight, by Claudia Gray, but not any of the others in the series. I loved the character Balthazar, so I'm very eager to see where she takes him.
I found Dan from the Vroman's website. After seeing that he was going to be there with Lauren and Claudia, I read the synopsis of his book and I was definitely interested.
When the Q&A was over, we lined up along the wall. Nicole was in front of me, so I was the second person in line. I had 7 books to get signed between the 3 of them, so while Nicole started with Dan, I went to Lauren.
Now. I had heard from some girls on Twitter that Lauren is super nice and when I walked up to her, she absolutely was. She was extremely engaging, commenting on my husband staying in his seat while the signing was going on and even saying that she saw him on his phone the entire time. She also asked if I had a blog. When I told her that I did a blog about book signings because something weird usually happens to me at every event, she asked what weird thing happened this time. At the time, nothing weird
had happened [and it didn't], so she asked for another example.
As I was telling the story, this is how she signed by book....
Lauren went on to ask how long it took us to drive up from San Diego [at this point, Nicole and I were both passing our books to all 3 of the authors, but I remained standing in front of Lauren]. I told her that it was mainly dependent on who drove, that I drove faster. And when I mentioned that I was one ticket away from losing my license, Lauren, Claudia and Dan all did the "Ooooooohhhhh".
Claudia was excited to see a hardcover copy of Evernight, I think she even rubbed the cover a little...
And Dan was just plain awesome...
After I had collected all of my books, I thanked all of them for taking the time and I'm pretty sure they answered "thanks for coming" at the same time.
All in all, it was an excellent signing. Lauren, Claudia and Dan are hilarious together and have excellent chemistry as a panel of authors traveling together. Everyone at Vroman's was friendly and helpful and I definitely look forward to going to future signings.
