As I mentioned last week, two Saturdays ago I was lucky enough to attend the
RT Book Fair down in Los Angeles. With over 300 authors in attendance, you can imagine what a madhouse it was, but it was MY kind of madhouse - stuffed full of booklovers and authors with everyone generally having a good time and lugging around sacks of books. Just check out the size of this place!
I was joined for the day by my good book friend Becca and we both got to meet many, many awesome authors - including:
Julie James (middle)- who, oh my, could seriously be any one of her characters. The woman is
gorgeous and very, very nice. We both got our copies of
Just the Sexiest Man Alive signed and went away with happy smiles.
Sarah Rees Brennan (right)- Frankly I was extra excited about meeting Sarah and
may have wound up babbling like a fool just a little bit while talking with her. True to form, Sarah was more than willing to share spoilers for the upcoming
The Demon's Surrender but since I couldn't bear to hear them, she did tell us the story about the time she tried to dye her hair pink like Mae, only to have it turn out a startling green. Also, she was extra generous with the swag and I even scored an alternate first chapter of
The Demon's Lexicon with the author's commentary. Excellent reading.
Ann Aguirre - So happy to meet this prolific writer. Ann was even extra nice when I gushed like a goon over her latest YA novel,
Enclave. Although I was a bit sad to not see any of her Jax books on display...
Simone Elkeles - So don't look at this picture too long, it's a wee bit fuzzy. Probably because Ms. Elkeles was super expressive and hardly sat still while we were talking. The best part about meeting Simone was hearing all about her trouble while writing
Chain Reaction - the third Perfect Chemistry novel which follows the youngest Fuentes brother, Luis, who is..wait for it..a
nice guy. Simone said she had no clue how to write a male character that wasn't a jerk who falls for the good girl. Needless to say, I'm even more intrigued now to see how she ended up pulling it off.
Patrick Rothfuss - I have no idea why I didn't get a picture of this awesome author, but for some reason I totally forgot. Probably because I was to busy being incredibly fangirlish at the moment [but you can see him complete with crazy hair
here in a picture from the Dear Author's recap]. I adored his book
The Name of the Wind and even purchased another copy there just so I could have him sign it since mine was currently on loan to a friend. He was a bit like a fish out of water among so many romance authors and even agreed that it was a little odd to be one of the few men without a rippling six-pack wandering around (courtesy of the
Mr. Romance competition).
Linnea Sinclair (right) - As funny in person as she in her books. My favorite author moment? She kept pointing out all of her cats that were used on the covers of her novels.
I didn't get pictures of them, but I also met
Kelley Armstrong and
Claire Dunkle while catching glimpses of many, many others. All in all, it was a fantastic event - one I wish I had been able to attend more of. But here's the lovely stack of books I got signed:
Annnndd.... Here's the massive amount of swag I came home with. Now, I'm going to be giving some of this away later on when books are released, but I do have a bunch of romance author swag to pass on
right now.
So if anyone is interested in a bunch of romance bookmarks, teasers etc. drop me a line at mmillet at gmail dot com and I'll send it off to you. First email gets it folks. Taken!
