Yesterday I went tromping off in my car in the extreme heat to find Mystery Bookstore in Westwood Village, where authors Cassandra Clare and Holly Black were doing a joint signing. (And if those are their real names, my name is Emma Blackwood.)
Anyway, my expectations were fairly low based on my previous book-signing adventures. Readers may remember my three-hour adventure waiting for Lemony Snicket and finally giving up, and my entirely unsuccessful attempt to meet Bruce Campbell on my dinner break. I got there an hour early, and the bookstore was empty except for a gentleman (who turned out to be Cassandra's dad) talking to the proprietor. "Do you expect a big crowd?" I asked the proprietor, and she grinned and said "No." So I went across the street, had a drink and talked to Robin. An hour later I came back and found a respectable little crowd of maybe two dozen, all of whom were much younger than I am, bless their darling little hearts. Holly and Cassandra were introducing each other - their give and take was very cute. They took an audience poll: "Zombies or unicorns?" Of course I went with zombies, but the overwhelmingly female crowd went with unicorns. "They have a giant sword right on their heads!" enthused Holly. Cassandra gave her a look.
After their talk, they read, and then they signed, writing beautiful notes to Emma inside my copies of "Ironside" and "City of Bones." I had not expected to get to talk to them, so I had thought of nothing to say except to tell Cassandra how much I loved the Very Secret Diaries. She was very gracious. I probably looked like somebody's mom to her.
If any Cincinnatians are interested -- oh, hell, Kelly, they'll be at Joseph-Beth a week from Thursday at 7 p.m. You'd love them; they're hilarious. And they attract fun people: I was complimented on my "Save Ginny!" shirt by a cute girl who said she & her friends used to sing "Save Ginny Weasley From The Basilisk" in their high school cafeteria. She actually poked her friend and said "Look at that shirt!" when she saw it, which was enormously gratifying to this tired old nerd.
And "City of Bones" is pretty damn good. I just started "Ironside" last night.
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4 comments:
Halfway through reading this post, I decided to comment asking if City of Bones is any good. In the last sentence, you answered my question. It's like we share a brain - eeeee!
Now, who is this Holly Black? I've not heard of her.
By the by, I love that you imagined the author of the VSDs will draw the same size crowd as Bruce Campbell. There's "cult status," and then there's cult status. :)
Yes, you're absolutely right. *I* know more VSD fans than Bruce Campbell fans, but clearly I need to be thinking more objectively about these things.
Holly Black wrote "The Spiderwick Chronicles" for children (they're often exhibited Lemony Snicket-style, being about the same size), and she's written three young-adult novels about urban faeries: Tithe, Valiant and Ironside. I read Tithe and thought it was pretty good, but I heard a kitten dies in Valiant and don't want to read it.
AE, the NYT had a link to this video today and it thought you would love it. I do.
http://tinyurl.com/mhwbk
Eileen, that is great! Thank you. I had read a bit of that article but did not get to the link.
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