Tag: bookevent

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Coastal Magic 2024

This year was the first time my husband attended a writing conference with me! He arrived the day after it started and definitely left an impression, at least on my heart.

This is the third conference I have attended and it was vastly different than any of the others. This conference was not just for writers but also for readers, which made it so much more intimate and cute. It was also the smallest conference I have been to so far!

Some of the amazing activities that they provided was a Murder Mystery Event! You can see above that my husband came dressed for the party just like he had for the pajama party. Along with those two events, where the authors participated greatly to entertain readers, they had a bestie night, author lunches, alone time, and a signing event where my husband and I bought so many books. The authors’ participation really had our appreciation and love for them growing.

This conference was also right on the ocean, so I had my first experience with the tide, which was terrifying!! I didn’t really understand or know how the ocean could be so close to the hotel in the morning and then crawl so far out at night. It definitely made me more terrified of the ocean.

But anyway, this conference was such an eye-opener. We learned so many things about relations and just how feeing writing can be in general. Honestly, I came away from this realizing that I can be more of who I am than I already am. I can fully explore myself and the real me without being afraid. I can finally welcome my true self to the world.

With that, expect our writing and business to not take a turn but to branch off. The branches later will be called Kasverse in the Dark and Lockdrest in the Dark. Those stories will still take place in our universes but the stories will be more adult themed. There will also be another branch later that we will be calling Kasverse After Dark and Lockrest After Dark, where I will be putting stories you cannot find elsewhere that are a little too mature for the eyes.

After this conference, I signed up for two more conferences I will be attending this year on top of the two I have already signed up for. One will be to train me to write our ‘In the Dark’ and ‘After Dark’ pieces of our universes correctly.

I have many more pictures and a video posted on my social media accounts if you want to check out more that this amazing conference had to offer. I am very thankful for all the authors, writers, readers, and staff who put this amazing event on for us. It gave us many memories, friends, and helped us make life-changing decisions in order to grow.

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Book Event

I attended a panel event hosted by Loyalty Bookstore with the authors KJ Charles, T. Kingfisher, Malka Older, and Martha Wells that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The theme of this panel centered around comfort reads and how they are important at trying times, like how they are now with everything going on in our world.

Mostly everyone agreed that how to gain comfort in a book is by earning it so that the comfort is grounded.

Martha Wells described comfort in knowing that life can be put back together. She said that there is no comfort without discomfort. She loves when there is bad going on outside for a character but comfort going on within. For her, happy endings are harder to do than bad ones because putting things back together after tearing them apart is the hard part. She loves mystery because she expects solutions at the end of the story and for everything to be set right. The Rivers of London Series is her favorite comfort read because it brings order to chaos compassionately and reasonably, which is what she looks for.

Malka Older said that when you encounter a comfort read, it is nice knowing that a good thing will happen at the end because it puts the reader in a good place. She believes that there needs to be potential for justice and that the reader needs to be with someone competent so that way the main character doesn’t stress the reader out.

It was interesting because then everyone built off the topic of competence. Apparently, there is even a thing called competence porn, which is when many characters are component and accomplishing difficult tasks with great aptitude.

T. Kingfisher is one of the ones who added to that conversation in saying that it is comforting to know that terrible things are happening, but as a reader, you know you are with a character that can deal with it. One of the things they love in books is knowing that they can relate to what bad things are going on. She writes mainly horror and prefers horror with happy endings otherwise she feels like she went through everything for no reason. For them, when they write horror, they always write it in the first person to bring the horror closer to the reader, and for dark fantasy, they write in the third person.

One of the very interesting things that T. Kingfisher pointed out was that the horror section at Barnes N Noble changes to reflect what is going on in society. It grows when more bad things happen because people are looking to relate to the moment and looking for comfort in seeing people getting out of the bad. There was a time when the horror section was even smaller than the western section because not much was going on in the world, but now, it has grown a lot bigger.

KJ Charles agrees that horror is sought to comfort and find happy resolutions. Lately, she has been reading Deep Sea Horror after the recent submarine incident. But that comfort can be taken away if the story is labeled wrong. She described it by opening a book expecting it to be a rom-com, but then encountering it being serious, and one’s taste buds are all wrong for it. It is also interesting that to her horror is romance’s evil twin because they do the same thing by emotionally messing with someone. T. Kingfisher added that horror and romance are the only two genres defined by how they make you feel.

This panel held a fascinating conversation, which I enjoyed and was happy to listen to. Thank you, Loyalty Bookstores.

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Book Event

I was able to attend an event hosted by Mysterious Galaxy, where David Ferraro, the author of The Alchemy of Moonlight, talked to Devin Greenlee about his newest release, Evergreen.

It was a cute conversation, and how both authors interacted made me feel like I was in a coffee shop, sitting in while they conversed.

Evergreen is a retelling of Rapunzel. During the conversation, Devin discussed how hard it was to decide how much to drift from the real story, but he feels he gave the best of all worlds. Without giving any spoilers, it is 75% romance, and then the whole story takes a turn.

Devin is known for writing books in six weeks; once, he even wrote a book in eleven days, although it was a mess. After he wrote this book, he was ready to self-publish it, but one of his friends convinced him to go the traditional route and find an agent, which worked!

Devin Greenlee expressed how he felt writing has been a part of his life and gave some cute stories about his journey with writing. One was how he combined efforts in middle school with a friend who loved manga, and they then created something together.

Devin Greenlee went on to explain how when he was growing up, he craved queer books, and the only one he found for the longest time was Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez. It made him sad how hard it was to find books he could identify with, so he decided to write what he couldn’t find when he got older. He hates how now queer books are being taken away and believes that adults need to give as much info as possible to guide lgbtqia+ kids through situations and expresses how he doesn’t get it because they will find that information anyway.

He lastly went into the process of how he writes books. Interestingly, he has a song playlist he has been working on for fifteen years that is ten hours long that he uses not just for writing but also for relaxing and sleeping. He also writes in waves. At first, he writes out the dialogue and the bare bones, and then he will go in and add the more flowy prose and emotions.

This was a very insightful conversation with many thanks to Mysterious Galaxy!

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Book Event

The Ripped Bodice bookstore hosted an event panel with three authors, Jennifer Mathieu, Nadia Mikail, and Linda Cheng, with the interviewer Amanda McCrina to talk about their romances that circled the theme of finding love in hopeless times. All three of their books are not just romances but a commentary on the world we all live in.

Linda Cheng wrote Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, an awesome genre blend of sapphic romance, Asian horror, and K-pop. Linda explained that writing it was a cathartic experience that helped her see the light during the dark time of covid. She chose to combine horror and romance because they are two of her favorite genres and both are about deep visceral feelings where one can really get into the core of a character when they are introduced to vulnerability.

Linda set K-pop as the background of this novel because she grew up in Taiwan during the hype and rise of pop. She loved seeing it become a worldwide phenomenon and listened to pop during the pandemic to feel better. She also loves survival shows and said that there is so much stuff underneath the surface of the K-pop industry with so much darkness to be explored, so she thought it was the perfect setting for a horror story.

Nadia Mikail who wrote At the End of the World talked about how her book was a pandemic baby. That she started writing it right before the pandemic because she was studying overseas and really missed her family. Once covid hit, she didn’t know when she would see her family again so she started writing this book where all the scary things flowed into it subconsciously. For example: being estranged from an older sister and the world ending. It is set during an asteroid collision with Earth. She wanted to place it there because she wanted to write an end-of-the-world story because it is during the end of the world when one thinks about what is really important to them. She stated that she knows that survival corrupts some people and that she wanted to dive into what a character would do when it came to thinking about what is important to them and what they are going to keep living for.

In Nadia’s novel, her main driving relationship is between the main character and her sister. The romantic love story was the easiest for her to write but the hardest was between the sisters because she had a sister growing up and knows how complex a relationship can be between siblings.

Jennifer Mathieu who wrote Down Came the Rain said it was dedicated to her friend who wanted her to write a YA about climate change. She went on to tell about how she lived during Hurricane Harvey in Houston where she knew twenty-five people whose houses were flooded. It was very traumatic for her and she wanted to make sense of all of it, so she began writing. During the floods, there was a time when it didn’t look like they were going to go back to the school where she taught and that they were going to have to share space with another high school. That didn’t happen, but it did happen to a different high school in the suburbs. Her book is about finding love when two high schools had to share space and combine during Hurricane Harvey. It dives into climate change because while living in Houston they have had to deal with so many different events involving the climate and things their homes are not set up for. She knows people whose homes have flooded in the span of two years and was there during the Texas Freeze. She feels like Houston is speaking as a character trying to tell people climate change is happening. She loves living there and loves the diversity so this book is her love letter to the city. She hopes that people who don’t have a connection to her part of the world can look at their communities after reading it and that this book can act as a window or a mirror to spark conversation.

This was a very deep interview panel that I am thankful The Ripped Bodice could provide us.

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Book Event

I attended an event with Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore discussing The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu.

First off, it was cute how much Samit loved the book that the interviewer Valerie Valdes wrote, which was Where Peace is Lost. After congratulating her and telling her it was amazing, he went on to explain that when the characters in her book first met, he knew the ending he wanted. And that meant a lot to him because it formed the central framing to where he questioned whether everything that was happening would affect what he wanted to happen at the end. I thought it was really cool that he took the time out of his interview to talk about her book that it was obvious he looked up to it.

When Samit was asked where he got the idea for his book, he explained that the idea had come from Aladdin. He felt that Aladdin was a fable that had no home and needed one and thought it had good relatability because it was known throughout the world. The biggest prompter for him to want to write his own story influenced by Aladdin was because he always had a problem with the original story. He didn’t like the wishes Aladdin made and didn’t like the character’s actions. He didn’t care for how Aladdin lied, stole, and cheated, and especially how he didn’t care about his city. He wanted all of that fixed. He wanted to see what would happen if Aladdin actually cared about where he came from, so he used the city where he grew up to inspire the city in the book.

To write a story, Samit explained he starts with a very complicated and detailed plan but is well aware that his plan will change. And that when it does, it means the book is talking back to him, and what he is doing is working. His novel is about a revolution where he wanted to use robots. He wanted to explore how robots could fit into society, their feelings, what drives them, and the bonds they make.

Apparently, what he did with the robots worked because he found them to be the most relatable as told by readers. Valerie added that she believes it is because it is a normal human impulse to side with the underdogs, which is what she was doing when she read it. She expressed multiple times how much she loved the robots.

Samit has some NDAs, but he did say he is waiting for a few things to fall into place regarding his writing and career. Valerie said that she is planning a sequel to her book, Where Peace is Lost. She is just waiting to see how many people buy that first book first.

The discussion between these two, especially their in-depth talk about robots across genres and media, was heartwarming. Thank you, Mysterious Galaxy, for the great event.

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Book Event

I was able to attend an event hosted by Oxford Exchange Bookstore discussing the book Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

This was a fun discussion with lots of laughs that went into how gothic books are typically written because many people in the group read the gothic genre. I was unaware that gothics typically are very slow-paced to let gloom seep in slowly. This was brought up because many reviews complained about the pacing.

I loved how much was researched about this book by the other members. I didn’t know that there were so many things that were based on real people and places in this story.

We went through examples of how this story commented on colonialism. Like them bringing their own soil to where they were to take over. (If anyone has read this, they should hopefully know what that means).

 Everyone liked Naomi. The best compliments she received were that she was fun and unapologetically her. Also, that she was inspiring in how she fought for control in a part of history where there wasn’t much control for women in their life.

Everyone absolutely loved the imagery and were amazed at how the author could write disgusting things so beautifully that made readers entranced by her words yet feel icky inside. It was funny because during the meeting, we looked up if this book would be turned into a movie because everyone agreed it would be excellent for film. We found that Hulu bought the rights a long time ago to turn it into a series, but no one has heard anything about it since then.

Near the end of this event, it definitely showed how great this book is for discussion. It felt like a Nancy Drew game, with everyone trying to piece things together and laughing the entire time.

Thank you, Oxford Exchange, for this event.

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Book Event

I attended an event hosted by Mysterious Galaxy for the book Playing the Witch Card by Jenni Marchisotto.

I loved the beginning because the host asked Jenni to choose between spooky things. Apparently, she likes Sabrina the Teenage Witch over Hocus Pocus because Sabrina was her childhood. She loves Beetlejuice over Nightmare Before Christmas. She laughed about the fact that she has been a witch as an adult almost every Halloween. How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix is one of her scariest reads. And she isn’t a big fan of scary movies because they stick to her. There is a scene in Independence Day that still haunts her. Blare Witch Project is the only scary movie she has sat through.

If anyone wants to learn about Jenni’s history with tarot cards and where they began, apparently, she was sent off to church with a friend because her parents wanted to take a vacation without her. Because her family wasn’t a big church family, she brought a tarot deck with her to church camp, thinking it would be cool. Hahaha. From then on, she went in and out of tarot cards as a young adult but really leaned into them as a full adult. She loves them because it makes her think of her life in full circle, like her past and what may be coming up. She doesn’t think of tarot cards as a fortune-telling thing but as a way to push someone to think about their situation differently.

She then gave a little history of tarot in general. She explained how they became more to the forefront of popularity during the time of the civil war and that they didn’t come from any particular tradition. They are European and came from games and spiritualism. So, she was very intrigued by how tarot cards can be whatever someone decides them to be. They have always been that way.

What makes the town special in her story is the town matriarch that keeps it looking very Halloweeny—in a spooky not scary way. She said one of the main characters has a steampunk Victorian Halloween vibe.

Jenni explains how she can’t name her characters until she knows their parents because she needs to think about what their parents would name them. So, to develop characters, she has to think about where the people came from and what the generations before may want from the characters. She has to dive into the past and figure out the whys.

There is the trope of fated mates in the story, but the main characters make the trope their own by tearing it up, throwing it aside, getting out, having a kid, and insisting on not being the fated mate. They made their own way.

Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow is a witch book recommendation by Jenni. She also enjoyed Cackle by Rachel Harrison.

Her absolute favorite trope is second-chance romance. She loves that because she loves the idea of people being fated to be together. Later, she would love to try the one-bed situation and a secret baby situation.

When asked if she would dive into another person from the town’s story, she said it depends on how things go with her publisher.

This was a fun and cute event. Thank you Mysterious Galaxy.

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Book Event

Tonight, I attended an event with Meet Cute Romance Book Shop to celebrate the launch of Accidentally in Love by Danielle Jackson.

The two other authors in discussion were Nikki Payne, who is an anthropologist who also writes romance books, and Denise Williams, who is the author of I hate you and its sequel, I Still Hate You.

The three authors started off the discussion with a few icebreakers. One of the icebreakers asked where one would tell someone to visit and what they would tell them to do from where they are from. Denise said she would tell someone to go to the fair but not try fried butter because it isn’t good for you. But then she started to describe what fried butter is, and Nikki started laughing and told Denise that she is not, not selling it because she made it sound so good.

They then talked about the similarities their female heroines have in their books. Danielle noticed that each of their main characters has a work life and has experienced burn-out or close to burn-out at some point. Denise agreed that her main characters are highly focused on their work because that is how she is. She also believes it is an excellent way to show that character’s passions aside from the romance. Nikki added to the conversation, saying that she never mentioned the word burn-out in her book but that it is what happened. That it is something that happens very often for a lot of women. But that love can help people burnt out by giving them a different perspective and showing them how to move to achieve a different kind of agency and reach what they were really working to achieve.

The next topic was family. Danielle said that she loves having family in books, especially parents, to cause trouble, give tough love, provide support, and to show relatable characters, and use parallels with their past lives. She uses parents and family as a great entry point in understanding characters and their motivations. Denise uses siblings a lot more in her writing to show different perspectives and world views. She explained that she loves to play with the sibling dynamic and that for her it gives interesting dialogue and helps move the story forward.

In discussing what kind of heroines they like to write, Danielle describes herself as quiet, straightforward, and just grumpy. Hahaha. So, she said she relates well with her main character in Accidentally in Love. In that novel, Sam has a lot going on, but she is just grumpy and Danielle expressed that people in books should have the allowance to just be grumpy if that is how they are. So, for her, she made the hero the sunshiny one and the heroine the grumpy one, which is a dynamic she enjoys doing. Nikki, she loves writing heroines who see everything in different perspectives than everyone else around them. Denise’s favorite heroine she wrote is the attorney RJ who knows she is a bad***. She enjoyed writing her in a way where she was unapologetically her. Denise found that very empowering. She described writing this character as writing how alpha men are written in books.

All of their books have interracial couples. Nikki said that each time she does that, she does it intentionally and pulls a lot of research for her books because it falls into anthropology. Denise said that all of her books but one have interracial couples, and for her, it is very natural to write because of how she has lived and her relationships. Danielle said that for her, what she did intentionally in her book The Accidental Pinup was give the white hero the messy background and the black heroine the emotional support with the cleaner background. She also gave her couple in that book a discussion that she has had similarly with her husband because she is also in an interracial relationship where the heroine explains how she has to live compared to how he can live.

This discussion was fun, cute, and insightful to listen to. Thank you, Meet Cute!!

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Book Event

Today we discussed Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid with Oxford Exchange Book Club. It seriously was a fun discussion. This book opened up many readers to discuss things we usually wouldn’t have discussed. We learned so much about each other and saw everyone light up with their passions.

But honestly, all I am going to say about this book, from my perspective, is that it is very triggering. The best way I can describe how triggering is by saying that if I were younger and had gotten ahold of this book when I was not mentally stable, I would have unalived myself because of the ending.

Below is a spoiler.

In this book, the main character, a victim of multiple forms of abuse, turns into a monster at the end and kills people. For me, that is the worst nightmare for many victims of abuse. Many young kids grow up scared to death that they will turn into the monsters that feed off of them. They demonize themselves. They humanize and make excuses for everyone else. Then at the end, this is what happens with the main character. She ‘has the seed of her papa’s monster living inside her,’ which was too much for me.

I love dark stories. I need them. But I also appreciate it when people are careful. Alice by Christine Henry is a book on this theme that does this amazingly, with still many trigger warnings. She demonizes the abusers by making them creatures. She gives strength to the abused. She uses tactics to put the perfect distance between the reader and the story while still offering the reader the glorious wave of darkness they can relate to and are looking for.

I would recommend Alice all day for those who love the dark sides of things. This one, not so much to those who have been abused. To those I would say to be extra careful.

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Book Event

Loyalty Books hosted an event to discuss The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson.

I loved listening to Alaya. She was very intelligent and insightful when it came to humanity and perspectives. She also put much care into her book to ensure certain characters came across as she wanted, along with certain social situations, contrasts, environments, and how the cities and her world would function. I could tell she cares so much. She said she rewrote four-fifths of the book, and the character Joshua was the big reason for the rewrite because she wanted to get him right.

Malinda Lo asked Alaya to describe her book since, most of the time, how an author would describe their book is different from how it is defined on the back cover. She started by saying, “This may not seem commercial.” Haha, but how she described her novel sold it to me, even though I have already bought it.

To Alaya, her book is a big idea of far-future sci-fi, like a new wave of sci-fi, with big social ideas about a young woman born in a place called a library, which was founded in the aftermath of a war. In the library, there are four gods that are giant AIs. Her world has eight gods in total, four of which are in the library. The main character is considered something between a human and an AI because she was born in the library. Through her relationships, the main character discovers the library’s history and what it means to be her.

Malinda Lo added to describe the book as a vast, complex, multi-layered world that blows her away.

Malinda Lo asked where Alaya’s idea came from. Alaya said her idea started with a basic concept while she was in the shower of a woman crossing a desert, leaving a library she didn’t want to leave, and heading toward a god that wanted to kill her. She also knew that the image she had in her head was sci-fi, not fantasy.

Alaya then went on to explain that world-building was very important to her in this story. She wanted the world to feel lived in, and like it could exist but to give a certain experience to it. She wanted to figure out how an organized society would work where people could download themselves or back themselves up. Or how a world would work where giant AIs can store so much knowledge. When she was writing and world-building, she felt like she was discovering her world, like she was chipping away at it and revealing it.