Tag: author

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Book Event

Macmillan Publishers gave readers an awesome event with Marissa Meyer for her newest book Gilded hosted on Crowdcast. This event was very involved with polls, questions, and interactions in the chat box. It also had a great timeline to keep the conversation flowing with various avenues of interviewing.

Gilded is a novel based off of Rumpelstiltskin, which sparks interest in many readers. I find it so interesting how many people love that fairy tale, including myself. Marissa Meyer said that what drew her to it was how whimsical, weird, and interesting the story is, but most importantly the mystery of it. In my opinion that is why everyone loves that fairy tale. There is so much left to the mind and left unsaid in that story, like why did Rumpelstiltskin want that child? Another opinion of Marissa Meyer’s in that original story is that the King was the bad guy. I thought that was an interesting take.

From what Marissa Meyer was describing of Gilded, her main character is a liar. I am so very interested to see how she gets readers to feel sympathetic for this character and gets them to like her. Another interesting thing about her newest book is that it sounds like the character who represents Rumpelstiltskin is a poltergeist!!! A very interesting concept!

For a very special treat, Marissa Meyer had brought on two very special guests. The first one was Rebecca Soler who has done Meyer’s audiobooks since Cinder. It was very cool to get to hear from an audiobooks reader’s experience and what she does to prepare. Rebecca Soler apparently is a huge fan of Marissa Meyer, so her dream job has been fulfilled in getting to be the strong women that Marissa Meyer writes. To prepare for a read, she first reads the book as a fan to get to live in Meyer’s world and then she jots down names, settings, and places that she needs to googles the origins of and pronunciations. Her favorite character that Meyer’s created is Cath from Heartless. Listening to her describe that character and book had me putting that book down on my wish list. Then before Soler left, she read us a small part of Gilded where the main character first meets the king, which was really cool to experience!

The last guest that Meyer had on was Anna-Marie McLemore. In an anthropology that Marissa Meyer is editing and that is coming out in January, they are one of the authors in it. The anthropology is called Serendipity and it is a collection of ten short stories that are based on different romance tropes. Anna-Marie McLemore is a YA author who has written many romances already so Meyer wanted to hand-select them to work with her on this anthropology with a few other authors.

Marissa Meyer was a great speaker in this event and I loved how she came dressed in tainted gold that I thought was perfect for the launching of Gilded. Near the end of this event, we got to listen to Meyer tell the story of Rumpelstiltskin that many know and then lay out the different endings that there are out there. An interesting fact that she gave about herself is that she usually doesn’t write in her writing studio but more so in her reading chair. And a word of advice that she gave us viewers was find joy wherever you are in your writing journey. She explained how she was so focused on getting published when she was younger that she would bring herself to tears about it because she was so worried about it instead of just enjoying the process. She wishes that she would have just let herself enjoy those years she could have been writing and growing instead of stressing so much.

This event was very enlightening and entertaining. I loved the set-up with all the different things that had happened in the hour and thought it was very well planed out and organized. I had already pre-ordered Gilded, so I cannot wait to get it and read it, and I am currently working my way through Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles. I actually just finished Scarlet a couple of hours before this event took place. It was so nice getting to see and listen to Marissa Meyer and I am so thankful to Macmillan for setting up this event on her launch tour.

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Book Event

Tonight I got to listen to a new author for me during an event with Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse as they interviewed Heather M. Herrman for her book launch of The Corpse Queen. It was an interesting interview and I enjoyed hearing Herrman’s journey in writing The Corpse Queen.

One of my favorite parts of writing as an unpublished author is all the research, and I love to hear other authors say that it is also their favorite part. Apparently Herrman had to do a lot of research for this book since she wrote this book not knowing the jobs or the places that she was writing about. It makes me very curious to see later how she pulled all her research into her story and if she was able to make it believable. I am also very very interested to read about grave-robbers since from the interview it sounded like a portion of the book will be centered around some historical facts about grave-robbing.

They also talked about characters in general. Herrman stated that her main character Molly was one that she always pictured being the main character, but who kept blocking her from really getting to know her as a character in the writing process. I thought that was very interesting, relatable, and may even show how stubborn Molly is in the heart of her character. Herrman also had said that many of her characters ended up taking different paths than she had expected, which is something I have heard many authors go through. The interviewer also brought up the fact that one of Herrman’s bad guys was a very great character because they were not just bad to be bad but had motive. Those are my favorite types of characters, so I found that to be such a great compliment to Herrman!

From the thoughts and discussions about editing, it sounds like it is always a bitter sweet gift for published authors when they have professional editors to give them an expert’s advice on making their books closer to perfect. Authors discussing parts of their editing process always calms my nerves and I appreciate hearing how much a manuscript can change. Herrman apparently had to change a decent part of her manuscript because she had a lot of focus on Molly and what had happened to her before the story, but the editors wanted her to focus more on the grave-robbing and autonomy aspects of the story. I cannot wait to see if, for myself as a reader, focusing on those aspects more so in the story works to draw me in more.

I loved hearing Heather M. Herrman’s passion when it came to death and how beautiful it is to her. She made very great points that death should be honored and that it is just a way of life. She was stating that at a time death was more talkable and approachable in a sense, but that now it feels untouchable and uncomfortable to talk or think about with many people. She said that her book is definitely scary and about death, but that it is focused more on life and living to claim your life. To Herrman horror is hopeful. She says she wants to find the meaning of life, what makes humans tick, and wants to get the point across that a body is just a body. There is more to death than sadness and a beauty to the spirit.

The interviewer ended the interview with a cute game of Would You Rather with Heather M. Herrman about her book. It is always interesting to hear an interview like this one tonight and how the writing process was for the author. After hearing all of this I am excited to see how it all came together. I can’t wait to read it!

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Book Event

This event started with a great and warm welcoming from the host! Right away I felt calm and then excited. Thank you BookPeople. I enjoyed the experience that your bookstore provided with Lauren Tarshis and Alan Gratz.

First off, I have to say that the reason why I joined this event was because my oldest daughter is in love with the I Survived books. When I came across this event, I couldn’t pass it up because I was interested to get to hear from the author. I was so pleasantly surprised by how inspirational Lauren Tarshis is and how great of a role model she is also. She talked with so much love and inspiration. As an aspiring author myself, I loved to hear that I Survived The Galveston Hurricane, 1900 is the 21st book she has wrote in the main series, that she also writes graphic novels, and oversees a magazine. Not only all of that, but she also has four kids and is able to travel and does so much research for her books to give her readers truth in the experience. It also made me happy to learn that she listens to her readers, if she hears from them that she should write something, then she goes and writes it, which was how I Survived The Galveston Hurricane, 1900 was written.

I learned so much about the Galveston hurricane from this conversation. I had not known about it at all and that there was a city in Texas right on the water that was on track to being the 3rd largest city in Texas until it was hit and ruined. It was so interesting to know that the hurricane was one of the deadliest natural disasters for America in history and that it isn’t that well known outside of Texas. It is crazy to think how something like what had happened changed the history of Texas. That even after Galveston was hit, it didn’t fully recover and Houston took its place for growing the faster and largest. It is terrifying to think about how back before technology not many knew about natural disasters and that it was harder to know hurricanes or anything were coming to be able to warn people. Even after it had happened, it is even crazier to think on how they couldn’t let the world know that it had happened because there was no good way to communicate the way we do now. Lauren Tarshis talked about so many facts flawlessly. She definitely does her research. It is amazing to me how historical fiction writers can put history in a great personal format. One of her examples to focus further on times back in the 1900s and how many reacted in certain areas, she brought up that Galveston had always flooded, so when it started doing it again, to the kids it was cool and exciting and an adventure, until it went too far. That focus helps put the reader further into the minds of the characters and how they use to live and how their thoughts were shaped about the oncoming disaster.

I found through this conversation how important historical fiction is for children because it helps them grow to be empathetic by giving statistics a face. These authors are really doing the world a favor by bringing history to life for children outside of textbooks and helping them see how much things can change after an event and showing how things can get better. It also helps children learn in a way not to repeat history and helps the tragedies that the world and many have felt never be forgotten and the impact the events had in the change of history always be recognized.

Now for the conversation! It was so brilliant of BookPeople to bring two historical fiction writers together. The conversation between Lauren Tarshis and Alan Gratz was so wholesome. They talked and laughed about their struggles and their enjoyment they find in their research and writing processes. One of the things I could relate to was having a character or thing they really wanted to plug into their plot, but trying to find room or space for that character or thing without it feeling forced. It was interesting how much harder it is for them as historical fiction writers to do this because they have to make sure they match up two timelines. They also discussed how hard it becomes to make sure their characters are not flat when they have so many characters to flesh out over all their books. My favorite part of the conversation was Alan Gratz’s gushing over the way Lauren Tarshis uses sound effects because he does the same thing and they even had favorites that the other used in each of their books and asked each other to borrow them for future books. It was so cute and such a heartwarming exchange between the two authors. You could feel the respect and understanding they each had for each other. I am happy they have each other to really talk to and dive in deep about writing historical fiction.

I highly enjoyed listening into this launch event! I have the book coming for my daughter, so I am excited for her to get to read it. I am also excited to have another author to suggest to her that she may like. I loved really getting to see how inspirational these authors are and I loved the feeling of happiness I got knowing that my daughter is reading books from an author who is kind and cares about her fans. This was such a great and insightful event and I couldn’t be thankful enough for finding it. Thank you again BookPeople for putting it on for us, especially on Zoom so many more could attend.

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