The time there was traffic

Ellen Hopkins has been an elusive addition to Dear Bully. It seems that I continually miss her signing dates or appearances at ALA. Even after the date at Vroman's was announced, I wasn't sure I would be able to get there. But I did.

We got up to the store around 6:20, which is late by our standards. There was a small group of people already there; however front row was still available! I bought the new book, checked with the events person to see if they were passing out signing tickets [no, they weren't] and settled in to wait for Ellen.

Just before 7, the events lady came in and told us that Ellen was stuck in traffic and would be at the store as soon as possible. To kill time, she went though the "housekeeping" items and even read Ellen's introduction.

Ellen got there around 7:30. She thanked us all for being there and waiting for her after she was late. She immediately started talking about Collateral.

While doing research for Collateral, she spent 100 hours interviewing military families. She also planned to launch something with a particular veterans program, however, after they saw the book, the veterans decided it wasn't a good fit. Ellen figured it was because she doesn't "pretty up" any of her topics.

She then read a poem from the book. The particular poem that is now part of a traveling Iraq photo exhibit. After reading, she shared that she followed a battalion through 2 deployments for authenticity as well as the fact that $1 from every sold copy of Collateral will be donated to a military charity.

The Q&A started after that and many of the questions focused on Crank, which was a very personal story. Crank focuses on Kristina who becomes addicted to meth [and is based on Ellen's daughter]. It was 6 years of Ellen's life and she decided to write the story for herself. She quickly learned that it was a story that touched a lot of people. Ellen would sell the book without an agent and on only 75 pages.

Ellen's daughter, Kristina, has been supportive of the books and is quite proud of them. At first she was wary, but now shares them with her friends. A lot of the stories from the sequel, Glass, come straight from Kristina, who is doing well now.

Ellen's advice for writers is to be a voyeur: listen to conversations. She gets a lot of information while at airports. Always write every day and if a block happens, try going to a new place to write.

After about 40 minutes of talking, the signing started. When I got up to her, I thanked her for coming. Ellen looked up and me and commented that we've talked on twitter. I said yes, that I'm the one who drove from San Diego. She said it was a far distance. I then told her that we almost came to Vegas for her and Michelle Hodkin. Hubs asked why we had to go to Chicago if they were in Vegas. Sooo I clarified that we flew to Chicago for Michelle.

AND THEN ELLEN SAID THAT MICHELLE TOLD HER ABOUT ME.

After getting my things signed, Ellen asked if we were driving back right away. When I confirmed that we were, she told me to drive safely.

Ellen Hopkins is funny. She's an excellent storyteller. And while I haven't read any of her books yet, after what I heard tonight, I'll be starting them soon.

The time the signing was first

Emily Giffin has been elusive for me. Something Borrowed was probably one of the first "chick-lit" books I had ever read and I would quickly devour her books when they were released.

When I stumbled upon her tour dates for Where We Belong, I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to The Grove or to Vroman's. And after finding out The Grove would be a wristband event, I decided on Vroman's. Annnnnnd after seeing the crowd pictures from The Grove event, I knew I had to be early.

The morning of the event, I checked the website to see what time it started. I happened to notice that the new book was listed as "probably in stock", so I called and put one on hold.

Turns out, they had plenty.

I got to the store around 4:30, bought a Snapple and settled in to wait.

It started filling up quickly. One of the best parts of book signings is the camaraderie of the audience. Instead of reading the book I brought, I passed the time having conversations with the people around me and the events manager.

Someone in the group even brought cupcakes with Emily's covers on the top.  From a bakery in Ohio called Polka Dot Cupcakery

Vroman's has changed their policy since the last time I was here. Instead of lining people up by row, they now hand out tickets as people arrive and line up numerically.


Emily got to the bookstore at 6:40 or so. She said that since she was early, she would start signing books until the scheduled time of 7pm. She asked if anyone had gum and I offered her a piece since I was in the front row.

She wrangled a guy in the audience to take photos with her professional camera. And would stop to pose with people, getting photos with her camera as well as the audience cameras. If there was someone with a funny story, she went up to the microphone and told everyone about it.

I was the third person to go up. Emily thanked me for the gum and I thanked her for touring. The signing was her 5th event at Vroman's.

She was absolutely adorable. At one point, she stopped to ask if anyone had a Tide pen because she had a little spot on her shirt. After someone actually came up with one, she asked if it could be used on silk. When the consensus from the audience was no, she told the Tide pen owner to grab it when she came up for the signing.

She also said that everyone needed to photoshop out the stain before posting the pictures on Facebook.

She started talking around 7:15 and mid chat, she got her camera back to to take a picture of the crowd to post on her Facebook.  Emily didn't do a reading, she says she doesn't like to do them.  She did talk about all of her books and how they got started before doing a Q&A session.  She provides her own commentary while telling stories, so it was pretty entertaining.

After talking for about 30 minutes, she went back to signing.  And because I had my books signed, I was able to escape the madness of the crowd!

The time we got a pregame

I saw John Sandford on the event schedule for Vroman's one day while I was there for another event. I've been reading his books for years, I've read all of the Prey novels, so I knew that I'd be attending somehow.

We got there way too early [surprise, surprise]. I was only the second person there, so I settled into "my bench" and started to wait.

As usual, the crazy people found me right away. There was a woman who sat behind me who was laughing nonstop. She didn't have a book, she wasn't on a phone or any electronic device. For 10-15 minutes, she didn't stop giggling. Once the giggling stopped, she started walking around the area, randomly sitting in every seat. She would sit down for a minute, look around and then pick another seat. Only to go back to where she started at.  O_o

Around 6pm, some guy came up to the event area and started fixing up the cart of paperbacks. Turns out the guy is John's son, Roswell. He runs John's website and tends to show up early to "give a pregame". He answers all of the fun questions, or as he puts it "the questions you're afraid to ask the author yourself".

Roswell told us that John had called, confirmed that he had landed at LAX and that Stolen Prey was going to debut at #1 on the NY Times bestsellers list.

Roswell kept us entertained while we waited. He knows nearly everything about the Prey series. I mean, everything. John uses Roswell as a database for the books and calls him when needing a reference from a past novel. He's quite hilarious and he loves my Doctor Who phone case ["Nice TARDIS"], so he gets extra points for that.

John got to the bookstore early. He came up to the signing area for a brief moment before going back downstairs. He did announce to the crowd that we shouldn't believe anything that Roswell said about him.

After an introduction, John started telling us about his horrible month of deadlines and house selling. The best part of the recap was John saying that he got a cut one night while packing. Not thinking anything about it, he put a band aid on it, checked into a hotel and went to bed. The next day, John woke up, found out that the cut had opened in the night and he had bled all over the sheets, coverlet and walls, making it look like someone had been stabbed 50 times. He did what anyone else would do "cover it up the best way possible and slink out of town".

When the Q&A started, I asked the question "When the first Lucas book was written, was it planned to have a reoccurring character?".

John said no, that he always saw the first book as a stand alone. And then he had the economics of publishing explained to him... He was told that a reoccurring character or series of any kind always sells better as the reader gets to know the characters and get invested. Even with that, John only figured there would be 5-6 books tops.

Stolen Prey is the 22nd Lucas Davenport book.

After about an hour had passed, John decided it was time to start signing. I had two books to get signed for myself, plus one for a family member. We asked for a crazy inscription in the family member's book and John had no problem with it!

When it was was my turn, I thanked John for his time and then asked for a picture. I figured he would just lean over the table, but he stood up, sat on the edge of the table and held his book upside down while grinning.

Going to a signing for an "adult" author is usually a lot different than a YA author. This one was full of laughs and silly stories and just as fun and enjoyable.

The time it was a social event.

Trying to hunt down Cynthia Hand has been a difficult task. As soon as Hallowed came out, I was watching her website for any upcoming signings. When the Spring Into the Future tour was announced and I saw that Cynthia was scheduled to be appearing at the LA stop, I double checked the date. She had the dates listed for the RT convention instead of the LA stop. I had tweeted her and didn't hear anything back right away.

So. Knowing that Tahereh Mafi is ALWAYS on Twitter [and she's really good at answering my inane questions, unless I ask for magnets and ARCs of Shatter Me and then she just laughs], I asked Tahereh if she could confirm that Cynthia was going to be there. Tahereh said that as far as she knew, yes Cynthia was going to be there.

Cynthia did get back to me on Twitter and said that they were trying to figure the dates out. She needed to rearrange her appearance times at RT before she could commit to it, but that it looked like it was going to happen. The other authors who were going to be there were all women I had already met, several times. The only author I hadn't met/read was Anna Carey...

On the night of the event, we got up to Vroman's around 5 and who did I find? Nicole and Ava. Lauren from Swoontini was also there and there may have been some fantastic hugs.  The 4 of us sat together and passed the time chatting up the books we've read and what we thought about them. We also talked about CC and the different panels. It was so so so much fun to be able to talk with them, not just because they are all fabulous [oh, they are], but I don't really have anyone in real life who is as passionate about reading as I am.

The event started around 6:15, with a brief introduction of each of the women by one of the Vroman's employees. After each woman gave a brief synopsis of their book, the Q&A started.

One of the best questions of the night was if the high school versions of the authors would have been friends with their main characters. I not even going to pretend that I remember all of the answers....


What I do remember laughing at was Tahereh saying that Juliet would have said, "Hey, I'm trying to lead a revolution" and Tahereh's answer being "Okay, I'll be over here". Veronica said that she would have just stared at Perry a lot, but that he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with her.

Then Marie Lu asked "If your main characters were in Harry Potter, what house would they be sorted into?"

Veronica said: Aria and Perry: Gryffindor

Tahereh said: Juliet and Adam: Gryffindor; Warner: Slytherin ["and he'd love it"]

Marie said: Day: Gryffindor June: Ravenclaw or Slytherin

Cynthia said: Clara, Tucker and Christian: Gryffindor, Angela: Ravenclaw

After about an hour of questions, the signing started. Having seen all of the other authors, I only had books for Cynthia. I still wanted to say hi to Veronica [who hugged me again! *squee*] and Tahereh. They told me it was nice to see me again and that they now expected me to join them at all of the stops for the rest of the tour.

I was able to procure another of Tahereh's awesome bookmarks. I didn't want to use the first one because it was so pretty... Of course she gave me some crap about it. I also got bookmarks from Veronica and Cynthia. 

When I got to Cynthia, I thanked her for being at Vroman's and admitted to being the person on Twitter who kept hounding her about the event. Annnnnnnd, she remembered me. I told her that we drove up from San Diego specifically for her and that was the reason that I kept asking.

I had a signed copy of Unearthly and asked of she would personalize it. She did and she even knew it came from MG.

They also had an awesome poster that I got signed by all of the authors. [Except, now that I look at it, I didn't get Cynthia to sign it *facepalm*]

As always, this group of authors was just a lot of fun. They all give hilarious answers. I will forever be attending their events.

The time I didn't read the books before the signing.

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.