Evening Out…

For the past month I have been super excited for last night (Oct 8th). Kelley Armstrong the author of two YA books THE SUMMONING & THE AWAKENING, and several adult novels was coming to my local Chapters bookstore for a reading, Q&A and signing.

Last month I won BITTEN from Random House Canada via TWITTER and I was excited and then really excited when I heard that Kelley was coming to town.

I mentioned this to both Donna and Linda. To my surprise they both wanted to go with me. So we planned this as an evening out.

When Donna and I first walked in we saw a section with chairs so I went to grab us three seats. Donna went off to pick up a few of Kelley’s books to get signed and I was looking around and what did I spot?

Yes the seats were next to the calendar display. I had to snap that picture. Is that a sign or not?

Just before Kelley came out I looked around to see there was quite the crowd behind us. I am sure Kelley was pleasantly surprised and it ranged from the young to the old.

This is Kelley and she is just about to read from her brand new book Frostbitten. She was telling the audience that the title Frostbitten was submitted by her as a joke and they accepted the title for it.

Donna got to ask a question and she got this tshirt. Kelley was telling everyone before the Q&A that she bribes the audience to ask questions and if you are picked you get some goodies ie tshirts, bags and USB drives with a bunch of goodies on it.

After that was book signing time. I got my two books signed THE SUMMONING & THE AWAKENING. Kelley noticed that I had a bunch of post-its attached to the side of the book and was asking if those were all the pages with errors on them and I laughed and said no they are parts of the book that I enjoyed and wanted to mark them so I knew where they were when I wrote my reviews.

The book marks she was giving away were really nice. Thanks Kelley for the bookmarks.

Kelley graciously posed for tons of pictures with her fans.

You can’t see in the picture above but this was when Donna was getting her books signed. You can check Linda’s blog this weekend for her review of the event and her pictures. I think Donna is going to be doing a write up too.

Another highlight of the evening was meeting another local blogger. Earlier in the day I spoke with Lucy-Enchanted by Josephine on twitter and she mentioned that she would be in the area and might stop by.

I kept an eye out for her that evening. Just as we were about to leave Lucy walks in and we got to chat with her briefly. She is truly a delight to speak with and looking forward to getting the chance to meet up with her again and to talk a little longer. Perhaps she will come to a local meet up one day.

In the above picture (L-R) Me, Lucy and Linda.

That was our evening out and I think the next time we go to another author signing for Donna and I will be in two weeks when we go to our local library to see Claire Holden Rothman talk about her book THE HEART SPECIALIST and then the following week we will be going to see Bill Haugland talk about his book MOBILE 9.

Then in November, Scott Westerfeld, Cassandra Clare and Holly Black will be coming to our local chapters and all three of us have agreed that we will be attending this one. I already have UGLIES (Scott’s book), CITY OF BONES BK 1 & CITY OF ASHES BK2 of The Mortal Instruments in my hands to read before then and hoping to be able to get those signed.

I just wanted to point out because it was brought to my attention that Donna is mentioned but not shown in any pictures. The reason that Donna isn’t in the pictures is because she doesn’t like to have it taken. I respect her decision and thats why there is no pictures of her.