A few weeks ago, we drove an hour through pouring-down rain into the bay area to see Marissa Meyer, the author of my favorite series,
The Lunar Chronicles. As much as I hate driving in the rain and traffic, hearing this incredible author talk about her books and writing was 100% worth it.
We walked into the children’s section of
Book Passage, a sweet little book shop in Corte Madera, and found plenty of shelves stacked high with the gorgeous new copies of
Cress, as well as
Scarlet and
Cinder for those who needed to catch up. In the signing room, there was a table of fun bookmarks, buttons and purple hair combs with the Cress title on them, so clever to go with the Rapunzel theme of the book!
Marissa Meyer was introduced and first and foremost, she apologized for bringing the rain with her from Seattle, where she had just flown in from. She delighted the crowd with many fun stories about growing up in a family of nerds (driving the point home by mentioning she had an uncle who remodeled his attic to look like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise—I wish she’d had pictures of that!) and shared a really awesome picture of herself as a child dressed up as a cling-on at the opening night of one of the Star Trek movies. Some of her early writing was fan-fiction based on her love of Sailor Moon, and was ecstatic that so many in the audience were familiar with the show! So the world of Sci-fi and fantasy definitely runs in this author’s blood.
She share that early versions of the Lunar Chronicle stories were written during NaNoWriMo, an event that she is a huge fan of and definitely encourages every aspiring writer to try. A really early version of Cinder was written as an entry to a Seattle-based contest where the person who wrote the most words in a single month would win a walk-on role on a Star Trek episode. Sadly she missed the prize by 1000 words, but found out later that they never filmed the episode anyhow! AND she ended up with a book that would later get her her first publisher deal---a perfect consolation!
Lastly, before open up the floor for questions, she treated the audience to a little storytelling! We got to pick which story out of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, or Snow White (which the final book, Winter, will be based on) and she told us the original fairy tale version, in all its grim and dark detail. We chose Rapunzel, to Marissa’s relief---she mentioned that Red Riding Hood is the most gruesome and there were some small children in the audience that night!
She then graciously answered tons of questions, and even more graciously signed tons and tons of books, all the while chatting away with her excited fans. It was a great night!
Oh, and most exciting for me, she confirmed for me that there is definitely some Han Solo inspiration in Captain Thorne. I suspected as much! ♥♥♥
*GIVEAWAY!*
I had 2 ARC copies of Cress, but of course I bought a gorgeous finished copy at the signing for my own collection, so I'll pass those two ARCs on to two lucky winners!
Enter below!
•Must be 13 or older, or have parent permission
•US mailing addresses only please
•Ends March 5th, 2014
a Rafflecopter giveaway
