Ilona Andrews San Diego Signing

So awhile back I found out that the universe had aligned itself the husband and wife writing team Ilona Andrews would be visiting Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego as part of their tour for Magic Rises. 

Yes. That Ilona Andrews. 

At this point, imagine me jumping around the house doing wildly uncoordinated fist-pumps while the hubby looked on in amused bewilderment. Keeping up a steady manta of "I want to go to there," I immediately called upon my dear friends Becca and Gladys to make the three hour road trip with me to meet one of our favorite writing duos.

Here we are at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore.

Despite my almost normal expression here, imagine an entire colony of juiced up butterflies pinging around my stomach at this point. I was a wee bit excited.

The bookstore was packed but somehow Becca and I wound up literally sitting at Gordon and Ilona's feet during the Q&A session. Which Gordon opened up by simply saying "So. What do you want to know?"

By the end, my butt was numb and my legs were all jittery from sitting still for so long but it was totally worth it. We are such book nerds.

Because this totally happened... 

I got to meet them!!!! And they kindly agreed to sign all my Kate Daniels books.

I cannot even begin to tell you how super cool and nice and gracious and funny they were. Maybe you can tell by my crazed I'm-a-swimfan-grin I've got going on here but they pretty much were amazing. Also. Ilona hugged me. I think I died.

Still high on endorphins and sheer giddiness, we met up afterwards with Maggie from Young Adult Anonymous (who is incredibly cool) 

 and enjoyed some seriously delish sushi while we rehashed every single hilarious thing Ilona and Gordon said (and the fact that they sorta matched, which was kind of funny). 

Like the fact that even though we all knew that Ilona was from Russia none of us expected her to actually have such a killer Russian accent... 

Or that some of the things Gordon said would remind me so much of Curran. I think at one point when they were talking about some changes they wanted their editors to make to Magic Rises very late in the publishing stage he said: "We're not asking you. We're telling you. It's our name on that book." I sat there giggling to myself just thinking of all the times Curran said something like that to Kate or to one of the Pack...

Or that Aunt B is their favorite character to write *sobs*...

Or when asked if Derek is ever going to get the girl and his own happily ever after Gordon responded with "Well he should!"

It was an incredible day. I could not have imagined them being more candid or funny or working so well together. Frankly, I'm still a bit in awe of their abilities. And of their books. Thank you so much for doing what you do so well. This is one loyal fan you've got in your corner forever.