Laini Taylor Signing

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,