Gordon Smith & Robin Wasserman Signing

Alexander Gordon Smith

&

Robin Wasserman

Signing Event

March 5th 2012 at 7PM

Third Place Books

This was such a fun event, Gordon was very enthusiastic and exciting while he talked about his writing career. Robin decided she was going to be the "opening act" for two of Gordon's very excited fans.

Robin told us about how she started off in the publishing industry for Scholastic. When she got the job she was told she was going to be working on Harry Potter, but didn't realize that actually meant the coloring book where she had to choose the best movie picture scenes to make into line drawings for the coloring book.  Robin told us she developed a crush on the line drawing of Oliver Woods. She also worked on a lot of Pokeman books too.

She did publish a Scooby Doo book that ended up having her name on it, which they aren't suppose to and someone almost got fired because of it. Robin decided that she wanted to be a real author and publish a book. Being in the publishing world helped her because the publisher would take employees books and publish them.

Gordon told us a few stories and brought in some props. He showed us his first horror picture book that he ever made. It has "scary" smiling monsters that made his mom say "oh how cute". He also brought in the mask he made of the wheezer. He made the wheezer because he got stuck on the creature and to help himself he created it. He tried to get back at his brother by scaring him with the mask, but he ended up scaring his mom. 

Gordon told us he always wanted to be a horror writer since he was 6 and when he had told his grandma this she brought home some horror movies for him to watch. She brought home Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a zombie movie. These ended up scaring him so bad he couldn't sleep, his grandma came into check on him in her night gown and without teeth and ended up scaring him even more. 

Years later he wanted to experience some real life horror situations. He got his friend to do the "I'll tell my mom I'm at your house, you tell your mom you're at my house" thing so they could instead stay the night in a local haunted house. After finding an entrance through one of the boarded up windows and with only one weak flashlight they decided to choose a room to sleep in. Gordan kept on hearing a ticking sound in the house and when he heard a second sound he panicked. He ran screaming out the room taking the only light with him and leaving his friend behind. Since he took the light his friend screamed and ended up scaring Gordan even more because he though they had him. When he finally found his way out of the house and as he was running away he was puking on himself. Later when he friend caught up with him he found out he had peed his pants. 

More years later when he was going to start writing Lockdown and figuring out that he wanted the book to be in a prison, his brother suggested he actually visit a prison. He got permission on visit and old house with a real dungeon the kind without windows of any sort. When they got in the dungeon his brother again suggested that he go into one of the cells, when Gordon got in there his brother slammed the door shut locking him in there for 15 minutes. Gordon begged and pleaded to be let out but wasn't allowed while his brother was snickering on the other side. Since the cell had no windows and it was pitch dark making Gordon's imagination go wild, but it created some amazing scenes in the books from this real life experience. 

There was a little Q&A section after they talked about themselves. 

(Q&A is summarized)

Panser or Plotter?

Robin: She use to be a panser when she was younger, but now she is a plotter. She will make bullets points and check them off as she finishes them. 

Gordon: He is a panser, he didn't ever know how Alex was going to escape from the furnace, he figured if he knew than the readers would know he knew.

Where do you write?

Robin: She likes to write in ambient cafes and she will leave and find a different cafe until she gets the right mood.

Gordon: He holes himself up in his computer room. He writes his books in about three week, but those days consist of writing for 12 hours a day.   

I think there was another question, but I just don't remember what it was. I did forget to take pictures of both of them signing their books. Gordon also had an "official" Furnace stamp which was pretty awesome.

There were two girls there that made t-shirts, brought Gordon a birthday gift and brought their dog that was named Zee after one of the Furnace characters. That dog was so fluffy and cute. 

 The Furnace girls, Zee and Gordon

I almost forgot to even take a picture with Gordon and Robin, thankfully my friend that came with me reminded me. 

Have you met either Robin or Gordon?

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On a side note, bookstores are really hard to take pictures in due to all the shelving being this bright yellow color, makes it really hard for me to get good photos.