Fierce Reads Tour Kicks Off in San Diego!

Yesterday was another epic author event under the belt for me, viagra 40mg down at Mysterious Galaxy for the first stop of the Fierce Reads Tour.

This fall Fierce Reads tour features authors Gennifer Albin and Ann Aguirre, what is ed with Jessica Brody and Leigh Bardugo as special guests.

Now, I’m already quite familiar with Jessica and Leigh. I mean, when Jessica Brody tweets you because she saw that you were interviewed in the CBS interview with Cassandra Clare, that’s pretty awesome. Jessica is the author of several contemporary YA novels, like My Life Undecided and The Karma Club, and the Unremembered trilogy, with a sort of Bourne identity storyline but with a kickass girl and a hot guy. Can’t deny that one can you?

Leigh Bardugo is the author of Shadow and Bone, and Siege and Storm, following the story of Alina Starkov in this immense and dark fantasy world, who finds out she has special powers and must be taken under the wing of the mysterious Darkling in order to learn them.

Gennifer and Ann are new authors to my ever growing list. Gennifer writes a sort of fantasy-dystopian where girls called Spinsters literally weave the reality of the world on looms. I just bought the first book of Ann’s trilogy, but I’m very excited to dive into it.

Authors at Fierce Reads

The adventure getting to Mysterious Galaxy was super fun, with my friends Cassandra, and Sylvia from FanGirlFeeels, and when we got there, I was SO happy to be there! I enjoy meeting authors and I love Mysterious Galaxy. They are such fun indie bookstores and they’re great. The authors had arrived at the same time, and both Jessica and Leigh said enthusiastic hellos to myself and to Sylvia, and thanked us for driving to see them.

Fierce Reads Books

The event was SUCH a blast. I already knew that Jessica and Leigh were super fun to meet. Each one of them has their own brand of humor, and I always have such a great time with their events. Add in Ann and Gennifer and it was literally a laugh fest the entire time. Seriously, I swear I want to be an author just to hang out with these super cool ladies. I was literally laughing, with a little bit of tears, every time they were talking. This was the first stop of the tour, and I know that the rest of the stops are going to be just fabulous, because they obviously have a fun and awesome chemistry going on.

Leigh Bardugo

All the authors shared a lot about writing, and about their books. I always love coming to these things because I feel like I get wonderful insight to the authors’ books and I also get priceless writing advice, which is always helpful to me. I gobble up all possible writing advice, anything to help keep me motivated and inspired.

Gennifer Albin

They also addressed the sort of controversy and issues going on with Allegiant. Each author sort of agreed that readers have the right to react as they please, but the reactions can be dealt with in other manners. Ann said she knows that not everyone is going to love her book, but she’d hope they wouldn’t bring it to her front yard. Leigh was extremely passionate about it, and said she would hope that readers understood where authors are coming from when they are writing their novel, and that they’re going to write the novel they set out to write. She also said that expressing all those emotions, like hate and anger, won’t change anything so its a waste of time. I liked what Jessica said, that love and hate come from the same place, and you know you’re doing something right if you get either of those.

Jessica Brody

I’ve also learned from these authors that the second and third books were harder to write. Gennifer Albin said that her first book seemed like a breeze to her, but the second one was a lot harder. Both Leigh and Jessica lamented over their third books, and jokingly called Jessica’s third book “stupidly awesome.” Ann talked about the difficulties of having a successful first book, and translating the story and the audience into the second and the third book.

Ann Aguirre

I found that SO interesting. She really explained how each of her books in her trilogy sort of represented something different: the first book was the quest, the second book was the emotions and building of relationships, and the third was the war. I really bought into that, and I really loved it. I’m writing a standalone sci-fi so I’m not frazzled at how to fit all of that into one book. But I thought it was a good way of thinking of it, and its something I’m definitely keeping in mind!

Then came meeting the authors, which is always fun because you get to interact with them, and I’ve gotten to know Jessica and Leigh, we’ve bonded and can joke with each other. When my friend Cassandra met Jessica Brody, she was like “you came with these clowns?!” and I couldn’t stop laughing. But she was extremely helpful with writing tips, and I’m going to be checking out this book called Save the Cat and creating a book bible for my sci-fi book. I’m going to start working on that now!

Lastly, I LOVED talking to Gennifer about Harry Potter and Doctor Who. She had the cutest Doctor Who lunch box/purse thing, and I showed her my Doctor Who tattoo and she was so excited about it, and she was like “I need to get my Deathly Hallows tattoo” and I just held out my other wrist, and she laughed, and was like “You stole all my tattoo ideas!” I love author bonding ;)

Here is all the awesome swag/signed books I got!

Fierce Reads Bag

Signed 52 Reasons Book Signed Crewel Book Signed Enclave Book Signed Fierce Reads Poster

OH! And of course I had Gennifer and Ann sign my poster of writing advice :) Check out what they had to say!

Gennifer and Ann Writing Advice

I also was really stoked to meet one of my followers, Kayla, who is the blogger over at The Thousand Lives. We talk a LOT online, especially about books, and it was her VERY FIRST book event. You can read about her experience here, and I am so glad to have met her IRL and to be part of her first author event experience!

Last night was just the first stop of their tour (they’re in Albuquerque tonight), and there are SO many more stops. Check out this link to find out if they’re coming near you. You definitely do NOT want to miss out!

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Leigh Bardugo’s Siege and Storm Release Party!

So I feel like its been forever since I went to an author event. Its probably only been a couple weeks, sickness but it feels like SO much longer haha. I think the last one I went to was the Mission Viejo stop on the Summer Lovin’ Tour with Suzanne Young, ambulance Sarah Ockler, try Shannon Messenger, Morgan Matson, Jessi Kirby and Kimberly Derting.

You can read all about that here :)

So I was starving for some author interaction!

And luckily enough, my dear friend Perla told me all about Leigh Bardugo (who I met about a month ago at the Ontario Teen Book Fest, which you can read about here) and how she was having a super cool release party for Siege and Storm, the second book in her Grisha Trilogy, preceded by Shadow and Bone and followed by Rune and Rising (coming sooooon).

I was SO excited about this.

I just recently read Shadow and Bone, probably about two weeks ago and absolutely loved it. I am a big fan of YA fantasy writers like Tamora Pierce and Cinda Williams Chima, and this felt similar but also unique to these two, and she just created a great story. You can see me review for it here.

(Side Note: Follow my friend, Perla, on Tumblr! She goes to author events ALL the time. In the last week, she’s met SO many. She’s meeting Richelle Mead tonight! She’s bombtastic :) You thought I met a lot of authors!)

I have never been to a book release party before. I’ve been to events where the book is released for the first time, but it was never termed a “party”, and I was never told to dress up!

And I totally didn’t dress up by the way, because I’m uberly lame and impossible when it comes to costumes and such. My version of a costume is making a tutu in a specific color, pairing it with a tshirt of that fandom and calling it a day :) I did wear a dress and some nifty high heeled boots so I felt pretty awesome.

So me, Tatiana, Sylvia, and my awesome friend Erin headed down to the Hemingways Lounge in Hollywood, California to go to this book release party.

Can I just say it was SO weird having my little beat up Honda valeted? The guy took my keys and looked at my car, completely with personalized Harry Potter license plate (and frame!), Harry Potter stickers, Star wars stickers, Hunger Games stickers,…and he just kind of sighed haha.

But anyway! What an awesome, awesome, awesome event! They went above and beyond for all of this! First off, there was a raffle for every single person who attended and the prizes were SO cool. There was this awesome grab bag of all sorts of cool Grisha swag, that my friend Sylvia won!

They also had a prize that was like 15-20 brand new books of various authors in Los Angeles. I wanted that one so bad. I didn’t win though :( Which was okay!

I was one of the first twenty five people to arrive, so I was able to get a tote bag, which I LOVE. I love me some tote bags!

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I was also able to grab a TON of swag, like buttons and all kinds of stuff. I’m hoping to have a Leigh Bardugo contest by the end of the month, so check back to see if you can grab yourself some of this swag, and who knows, maybe a signed copy of Shadow and Bone ;)

Book Swaaaaaaaag

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They also had a really cool photo booth set up as soon as you walk in where you could pile in with your friends, get some props and make some awesome faces.

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It was a seriously awesome time though. I had never been to a book release party so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from it, but if book release parties are all like this, I want to go to more! There was all the free swag and the photo booth to begin with. There was an open bar that was serving this sparkling sweet wine and waiters and waitresses were going around, passing out little hors d’oeuvres, like mini burgers and mac n cheese and all sorts of yummy.

Leigh was mingling with the crowd, hanging out, looking like she was having a seriously fun time :) I ran into her once, and she totally remembered who I was, and knew who I was, which was pretty cool, I’m not going to lie. She is so funny, and she’s so down to earth too. I honestly really love that she is so available to her fans through social media. I’m friends with her on facebook and she nearly always replies to my tweets. She is SO available to her fans.

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And she’s so hilarious! For her presentation, she read some writing she did when she younger about the kind of abilities that she wished she could have. There were the usual, like flight and invisibility and being able to read people’s minds (though with an on/off switch haha, but the best one was the ability to write and publish a novel.

I’m not going to lie, I kind of teared up at that. Because the fact that when she was younger, she paired writing and publishing a novel with something impossible like being able to fly. But she did it, and she’s a fantastic writer, and so popular, and her book, Shadow and Bone, has been optioned to be a film. It really gives aspiring writers, like myself, a lot of hope. Writing and publishing a novel seems as impossible as becoming a Major League baseball pitcher, or a Grammy award winning musician. But its possible :)

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Sorry for the blurry pictures. It was all dark and funky lighting so it was SO hard to take good pictures.

Moving on though, Leigh also did a Q and A, which was fun because most of the questions, and all of the answers, were making people laugh. She also read a little excerpt from Siege and Storm, a scene between Alina and the Darkling, which was awesome, and which you see above. (And yes, that is Margaret Stohl holding her flashlight for Leigh to read).

There were so many authors there as well :) I saw Morgan Matson and Jessica Brody, both of who were SUPER excited to see us, and remembered us (Morgan told us we needed our own reality show, and Jessica said we were loud, but in a good way). Jennifer Bosworth was also there, as well as Melissa de la Cruz, Lissa Price, and Marie Lu. I’m sure there were more, but it was hard to tell. Its always fun to hang out with authors, especially when you look up to them so MUCH. Such a fun time :)

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Meeting Leigh again was REALLY cool, and she’s seriously a fun lady. Her remembering me was a nice little cherry on top to a super fun night, and I loved that she really took the time to talk to each and every person who came and take pictures with them, and sign their books and all of that. She really reached out to all of her fans, and it was awesome. She makes me laugh, and she wrote “I’m hilarious” in her books, when I had a word vomit moment and asked her to write something funny in my book, because I’m awkward like that.

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I’m having SUCH a blast lately, with all these author events, and making author friends, and getting to meet the people whose books are so amazing, and inspire me so much. Its been SUCH a blast.

I just started Siege and Storm today (I had to read The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen first, and I finished that in less than a day), and I’m already loving it, and I’m only 50 pages in. I hope, hope, hope, and should be done with it by tomorrow and I’ll have an AWESOME review for you guys!

I’m going to see her again (and Marie Lu, and a couple other cool people) on June 26th at the Grove in Los Angeles so I hope to get a pretty copy of Shadow and Bone signed for you guys! You guys love giveaways, don’t ya? I know you do! And then I can throw some of those buttons in there too!

Hope you enjoyed my recap of Leigh’s party!

And come back tomorrow for the Book of the Week, and keep an eye out for Sara’s Quick PicksEpisode Three, and an interview with the AMAZING Cinda Williams Chima!

Happy Reading!