Blog Challenge Day 4!
Did I mention I got to see my favourite
author?
Well I did. And my little fangirl heart almost couldn’t handle it.
Laini Taylor was in South Hadley
Massachusetts. Odyssey Bookshop sponsored her being at the local college. And
me being me didn’t mind driving 4 and a half hours for it. Mind you this time
included traffic and don’t forget the “lovely” Connecticut drivers on CT-15!!
Gosh gotta love Connecticut drivers and their inability to use proper following
distances at 70mph. It’s just lovely…… not.
But what was lovely was the fact that I got
to see Laini Taylor. She’s legit the most down to earth person. And the
questions asked were really good ones. For instance they wanted to know what
kind of Chimera she would be, Madrigal (if you were curious).
I had asked for advice for finding an
agent. She said she found hers by going to a Society of Children’s Book Writers
and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference. I’d never heard of the SCBWI before so it
was insanely helpful to me. Since then I’ve done my research, there’s the New
Jersey chapter of the SCBWI conference in June, the deadline is next month for
registration. Needless to say I’m getting my shit together to try and make it. For
that information alone it was worth the drive.
What made the day the best? I got books
signed! It’s my newest addiction is to have signed books. I bought the whole
Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. It’s going to look amazing on my book
shelf! Woo!
I think I did really good acting my age
when she was signing my books…. I tried.
Plus it was really cool to hear her talk on
her writing habits and what not. Because here’s the thing I don’t know any
other people who are writers. So I don’t have a baseline to see if what I do is
normal or not. And to hear another author speak about their habits and have the
run pretty close to mine was a relief. It also makes me want to go to a coffee
shop to start writing a bit.
Because lately I’ve been thinking about how
my mind literally is always on writing. And then I was like well do most people
just sit down and write in a linear fashion. Because I tend not to. I like to
write up cool scenes and save them for later and link them in. I mean yeah I sort
of write linearly but if something really good comes in my head I just have to
write it before I lose it. I’ve lost some good scenes by not writing them down
when I first entertained them, oh well guess they weren’t good enough for my
books then. So to hear Laini Taylor talk about her writing style and how she
came up with the idea for Daughter of Smoke and bone I was like, cool I’m
totally normal.
All in all it was a really great day and I had
a blast and a half! I need to manifest more of my favourite authors to come to
the east coast! I’m so addicted to seeing them.
Cheers,