2 Weeks, 3 Book Signings, Total Awesomeness

This has been a great couple of weeks, and it makes me so happy that I live in Lansing.
It started out with the "Smart Girls Kick It" tour, which made its final stop in Lansing. I was thrilled when I heard they were coming, since I missed Kelley Armstrong the first time she came through this area. I was beyond thrilled when I realized that this was the only stop where Carrie Ryan joined them. I got there an hour before the signing, and stayed four hours after it started, so I could get all of my Armstrong books signed. It was a great signing, they women were all entertaining, and had a great banter. I really hope that they make it this way again sometime. I don't want to go into what they discussed since I can't remember what they wanted kept secret. I will say that they did a lightening round of questions, where you could ask anything (the more embarrassing the better) that they could answer in thirty seconds. Very amusing. One of the great things about the signing (and there were many) is that almost all of the authors there had a story in Enthralled, so it was like having a souvenir of this signing in particular, getting them all to sign it.

This signing was followed by a signing last Thursday with Lisa McMann, promoting her new books, The Unwanteds.

It was really interesting listening to her talk about how involved her family is in her writing process.  Her son even drew a postcard that she is giving away as a limited edition with the book, and she's hoping that will be giving away new limited edition cards with each subsequent book in the series (looking like 7 right now).  I was so worried that my copy of The Unwanteds wouldn't arrive in time for the signing, since I ordered it from Barnes & Noble's website, on a 1-3 day shipping, and it took 5 days to arrive!  It arrived the day of the signing. 

Today, I was lucky enough to go to another signing.  This time Mike Mullin came promoting his debut novel, Ashfall.  Only four people showed up for the signing, but this meant that we really got to have a great discussion with him, learning a lot about his passion for Super Volcanoes, his writing process, his research, and what dystopian novels he'd recommend (including The Hunger Games, Epitaph Road, XVI, and Bumped, as well as classics like Z is for Zachariah).  He did a taekwondo brick break for us, at the beginning and the end of our discussion.  When he signed our books, he also signed a piece of the broken cement for us all, its definitely the most unique souvenir from a signing that I've ever gotten.  It might make a good bookend.