Girls' Nightmare Out Tour

Tour by Tor

at Third Place Books
on August 23, 2012

Authors

Kendare Blake of Girl of Nightmares

Lisa Desrochers of Last Rite

also joining the Seattle stop Amanda Hocking of Wake

Marta Acosta of Dark Companion

Before the event blogger Benji set up a dinner with Kendare, Lisa, Marta, a local publicist, me and blogger Rachel. Traffic was terrible at 5pm of course and all of us bloggers were late. Rachel wasn't even able to make it at all, so sad. The rest of us had a lot of fun though, it was nice just to talk to the authors about anything. We talked about The Hunger Games, things that scare us etc. It was a blast and I would love to do it again with another group of authors. Being a blogger has some fun perks. 

Leading the discussion was Bill Kenower from Author Magazine where he does interviews with authors called Author2Author. He was a bit late so initially the event was started off with one of the Third Place Books event coordinators leading the discussing and then being passed off to Bill for the remainder of the time.

We did a fun author blogger photo, all the authors put a hand on one of our shoulders, it was entertaining
Benji of The Non Reluctant Reader
Anna of Peace, Love, Teen Fiction 
Pregnant me
Rachel of Beauty and the Bookshelf

Another fun event, they keep on getting more and more fun the more bloggers I'm able to meet and chat with at the event.

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Spring Into the Future Event Recap

SPRING INTO THE FUTURE EVENT

Tahereh Mafi, Veronica Rossi, Cynthia Hand & Kimberly Derting

May 5th 2012 

UW Bookstore in Millcreek

I took a lot of pictures while at the event, I did have a few more, but these were the best ones.

The book displays at the bookstore

This event was so awesome, I loved meeting Tahereh and Veronica for the first time and seeing Cynthia and Kimberly again. The energy of the event was so much fun and very entertaining. 

Talking about their books

 Veronica Rossi & Kimberly Derting

 Cynthia Hand & Tahereh Mafi

The Q&A session

I didn't even try to remember the questions and answers, that would be way too hard with this many authors.  There was lots of good questions asked that all of the girls each answered. 

The Fans

My seat has all the extra crap under it. I got there 45 minutes early to get that seat. Guess who also was there, Daniel Marks debut author of Velveteen, can you see him? 

(3rd row back, black shirt with his head down)

 Getting all prepared for the signing part. Each had some swag to giveaway.

Tahereh and Cynthia pre-signing the posters while Veronica started the signing line

Signing

 The girls signing their books

Picture Time

 The girls and I

 The girls and Anna

Peace, Love, Teen Fiction

The girls and Jorge

fellow book lover

 This may seem really random, but this is Tahereh's purse. I saw it when she made her appearance and I just loved it. At the end of the signing I just had to ask her if I could take a picture of it. Too freaking cute!

Signatures 

 All the cool swag we got

Bookmarks for Rossi and Hand (I forgot to add Derting's bookmarks because I got it last week and didn't pick up any this week), a poster signed by all the girls and Tahereh's friend made a specialized necklace for the event. 

 The books I got signed at the event, all have been personalized 

I really loved this event and I hope I will see all of them again when their next books comes out. They were all so sweet and amazing. I will always recommend all of these girls books to everyone that will read them. 

Did you get to meet them at one of their tour stops?

My Reviews
Under the Never Sky
The Last Echo
Hallowed
Shatter Me

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The Last Echo Launch Party

Kimberly Derting's 

The Last Echo Launch Party

April 28th 2012

Third Place Book in Ravenna 

Kim started off by talking about the book for a little bit, then she moved on to a Q&A and finished with a reading from The Last Echo. She decided to read from the killers POV when she usually doesn't.  
(All has been summarized from my memory)

Talking a little about the cover

 The cover flower was original going to be for another book, Wings by Aprilynne Pike, but when they were doing the cover shoot they weren't liking how it was turning out so they scraped the idea. Kim's cover designers were trying to come up with a cover that would off set the gruesome title The Body Finder and they ended up recycling the flower and using it for the cover. The flower has been on each cover, it also isn't a real flower it was made. The cover for the next book has already been made and Kim says it is her favorite one. 

Kim told us a story about how she knows she is working too much when her daughter came up to her crying and sobbing "You don't love us anymore". She ended up starting to call her daughter Violet, but stopped herself before she finished. Yep Kim is working a lot and we love her for it!

How do you name your character?
Kim names her characters after people she knows. A lot of dead girls are her neighbor's kids and she will call them up asking for permission to use their name as a dead girl. Most have said yes, but a few have said no, when they said no she ended up turning them into the bitchy girl at school. The lesson for today, never say no to Kim when she wants to kill you. The neighborhood boy begged Kim to make him a murderer, so the next murderer is named after him.

Violet was a name that if she had another child she would have named her Violet, but since she isn't having anymore kids she named her character Violet instead, a different child of sorts. Her husband insists Jay is named after him since his name is Josh and it could be shorted to Jay.

How did you come up with the killers?

The killers mostly have been themed/inspired by real life killers, expect for the first one. Kim stated that real life is scarier than anything created in fiction. Kim knew she wanted the killer to be a pair of people working together to kill the girls in The Body Finders. Gary Ridgway inspired The Lost Echo killer, Charles Manson inspired the next book's killer.

When Kim was first writing from the killer's point of view and how they snagged the girls she was concerned with how the publisher would take it since her books are YA. They actually really liked it and she has added more with each book. Their was a scene in The Last Echo when Kim was done writing it she felt gross and dirty.

Why Rafe's character?
Rafe and Sara were created because Violet needed a way to access other killers and bodies. Kim didn't want to have that many dead bodies being found in Buckley, since she lives near there and the area doesn't actually have that many dead bodies and killers.

I made Kim a bit nervous with all the photos I was taking, she was afraid I would have all of these bad ones of her, but I assured her that bad ones get deleted.

 She also had some prizes to give out, everyone got a lilac nail polish, bookmarks of all the books, a stick of The Last Echo and Last Echo wrist band. If you pulled a bookmark with a red heart you got to choose an extra prize, either a bag or a tee shirt. I was lucky enough to get the bag, along with all the rest of the swag.

 Kim and I

This is the 3rd time I have seen her but the only time I have taken pictures

Kim and Anna @ Peace, Love, Teen Fiction

Kim and Jorge

 he doesn't have a blog, but he a local book/event fan that I have meet and chatted with on Facebook

The event was awesome and Kim is so much fun. I really enjoy going to her events and I can't wait to see her again this Saturday for Spring Into Future event. I love how many local authors Washington has, we are pretty lucky to be the perfect place to write and read with all the crappy weather and rain we have.

Have you meet the lovely Kimberly Derting?

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