Bringing YA To You

Have you ever wished that a big YA book tour would make a stop in your hometown? Well, here's your chance for that wish to come true! YA2U is a program that features five award-winning and best-selling authors who are holding a contest to see what city they should visit in an exclusive tour stop!

The authors are collecting votes from January 1 to February 15, and any city in the continental US or any Canadian city that has an international airport can win an exclusive visit from all five authors, including an author panel and book signing! Entering is super easy--and if you help spread the word about the contest, you can also enter win a signed copy of all of their books (TEN signed books in total!)--and the book contest is open internationally!

The authors in the program are:
* Marie Lu, the New York Times best-selling author of Legend and the upcoming Prodigy
* Marissa Meyer, the New York Times best-selling author of Cinder and the upcoming Scarlet
* Beth Revis, the New York Times best-selling author of Across the Universe, A Million Suns, and the upcoming Shades of Earth
* Victoria Schwab, author of The Near Witch and the highly-anticipated upcoming The Archived
* Megan Shepherd, author of the debut novel The Madman's Daughter

And they want to have an event in your home town! To participate, just got to the YA2U website and let them know what city you want them to come to. And while you're there, help spread the word about the contest and you can be entered to win all of their books--TEN signed books in total!

Here's why the YA2U Team should come to MY hometown in SEATTLE!

Contrary to popular belief we do have some amazing weather in Seattle, when it is nice it is PERFECT! We have some amazing sights to see that will keep the authors entered should they come to our city. They have the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, The Gum Wall (in Pike), beautiful waterfront, Ride the Duck tour, EMP (Experience Music Project), Pacific Science Center, original Starbucks and Seattle Best Coffee houses. Us Washingtonians love our books. Since we do have a lot of rain, that produces because green scenery, we get to stay indoors a lot and read lots of books. We do have lots of readers that would love to support all of the these authors.
(Pictures are all my property/photography and can be viewed more on my FB page)

Why should the YA2U Team come to your hometown?
Why not join in the fun today and share with others about this program and your hometown. The more votes your town gets, the closer you are to having your very own personal tour stop! Vote for YOUR town here!

And if you help spread the word, you can also participate in the book giveaway. Tell them that you learned about YA2U from me and we both get extra entries in the contest!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Top 10 Tuesday (20)

Top 10 Tuesdays

Topic: Top Ten Posts That Would Give the Best Picture of Me

This meme is created by The Broke and the Bookish, anyone can participle telling about their top 10 topic items are.

The majority of my posts that I chose have to do with being at events, taking pictures and having lots of fun. I want to show my blog readers that I not only love books, but I love meeting the authors who write them.

Marissa Meyer Cinder Launch Party Event

This was a wonderful and fun event. I loved taking pictures and writing an event recap for this event. Marissa has linked this recap on her blog and has used some of the pictures on her blog and Facebook as well, which makes me extremely proud.

Never Eighteen Launch Party Event

I meet Megan while at Meyer's launch party, while I wasn't able to read her book before the event I read it after and still attended the event. It was fun and again I had fun taking pictures and seeing some familiar faces.

Alexander Smith and Robin Wasserman Event

This was so much fun, I absolutely adore Alex and I loved all the props he brought to present. Alex ended up still the show and Robin described herself as the opening act.

The Last Echo Launch Party

Yes another launch party I was able to attend. I love Derting, this was the third time I have meet her and it has been fun because now she knows me and who I am. I love that to some authors I am actually a known reader. 

Fierce Reads Event Recap

When I attend 1 author events I will remember what the authors say and write it down, but on multi author events I have given up, it gets to crazy. Now I just take lots of pictures and try to capture the entertainment of the evening. At this event I actually meet up with some local bloggers and had dinner before the event.

Dark Days Fall 2011 Tour

For this event I was actually asked by Harper to be the official event blogger. I recorded the event and took pictures. I put a lot of time into this event and post, it was exhausting and lots of fun.

Author Interview

My very first author interview with Alexander Gordon Smith. I later got to meet him which make the experience event better.

My last favorite posts are some of my favorite Bookography pictures I have taken. I'm very proud of how my photography skill has progressed over the last year. 

Looking For Alaska

I was initially taking these smoke pictures just for fun and to do this for the first time. While I was going through them I realized that this picture looked like the cover of Looking for Alaska. I do want to take these smoke pictures again, it was a lot of fun.

Illusions 

I didn't start out with this picture in mind, I was first trying for a refraction picture but I wasn't liking. As I adjusted I ended up with this picture and I really liked the end result.

Snow White

An in the pages picture that I really liked. I took this picture around the time one of the Snow White movies came out.

What are your posts that best describe you?

<3Books

Fierce Reads Tour Recap

Fierce Reads Tour

Event Recap

The Picture Edition

June 9th 2012
Third Place Book in Lake Forest Park

Pre-Event Dinner

Before the event two other bloggers Benji, Sarah and I had dinner and chatted about books. This was really fun and I'm so glad Benji suggested it. I hope I can do this more often for other events in the future.

Me, Benji & Sarah

Benji being a good sport so I could set up my camera and flash for the event

The Event

I love multi author events, they are always so much fun, especially when the authors have already had a few tour stops together and you can really see their fun dynamic playing off of each other. There was lots of laughs throughout the entire event and I had an absolute blast. I won't be posting about any of the Q&A topics, too much to try and remember from this awesome event. Some of the other blogger recaps did post  the info, you can find the links to their posts at the bottom of the post. I on the other hand captured lots of fun pictures.

Lish McBride, Marissa Meyer, Leigh Bardugo, Jennifer Bosworth, Anna Banks & Emmy Laybourne

 I can't remember exactly what the context of this picture was, but it was a fun and entertaining moment

The Book Trailers

 Each author's book trailer was presented before they talked a little bit about their book

Signing Their Books

 Anna from Peace, Love, Teen Fiction

Look I got a picture of Daniel Marks again author of Velveteen coming out in October

A few of the girls posed for me while they were signing my books

Group Photos

They are so fierce with two other bloggers Benji and Sarah

 All the girls holding up the awesome book necklaces Anna made for them all

In summary the event was AWESOME and I really hope they all will come back to Seattle for future book tours. I hope you enjoyed the photos that I took.

The Books

All the books I took with me to get signed at the event. The four most current ARCs, plus a finished copy of every authors book. The second copy of Struck and Cinder are for a friend that couldn't make the event. 

The Sweet Swag

The Fierce Poster

Other Bloggers in Attendance 

The official event blogger for the Seattle stop was Sarah's Random Musings... she will be hosting a giveaway for all 6 of the authors signed books

A few other local bloggers have also posted awesome recaps of the events

The Non Reluctant Reader

The Readventurer

Chicks with Crossbows

My Reviews

(read all but one before the event)

Struck

Of Poseidon

Monument 14

Shadow and Bone

Cinder
 

<3Book Events

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?

<3Events