Last evening my daughter and I attended the inaugural "Turning Pages: A Literary Festival" hosted by Words Worth Books and held at The Museum. This was our first author event. It was a full day event starting with children's authors in the morning and early afternoon and progressing to young and then older teen authors in the evening. (note: the authors aren't teens, they are writing for a teen audience). As my daughter is fourteen, we chose to attend the four final authors: R. J. Anderson, Lesley Livingston, Alyxandra Harvey, and Kelley Armstrong. We arrived as R. J. was fielding questions from the attentive audience. It was interesting to learn why she named her main character Knife and why she chose the other faery names as she did. When I do get to read Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter, I'll be smiling each time his name is mentioned.
One of my earliest reviews was the debut novel Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston. I was enchanted by this book and was thrilled when she took to the stage. After reading an excerpt from her first novel she talked about the covers of her books. We found out that the model who posed for them has the same initials as her main character Kelley Winslow. We were also given a sneak peak at the cover for book three. I love it, but we were sworn to secrecy, so no hints are coming from me.
Even before we made it to The Museum, daughter had informed me that we would be purchasing a copy of Hearts at Stake by Alyxandra Harvey. She is a new author to both of us, and after having heard her read the prologue to the book, I can't wait to get started on it. The second book in the series will be out shortly and books three and four and finished and waiting their turn.
The final author of the evening was Kelley Armstrong, author of both adult and teen novels. She read us an excerpt of her latest teen novel The Reckoning. The audience was held motionless as she related the story of the pendent/necklace that Chloe wears in the cover artwork of all three of the books in this trilogy. We were also treated to the opening chapter of the book that will be the start of a follow-up trilogy to The Darkest Powers Trilogy.
Photo Left to right: Kelley Armstrong, Lesley Livingston, R. J. Anderson, Alyxandra Harvey. At the conclusion of their presentations, we were all invited to meet the authors, ask for autographs and pictures and ask any additional questions. They were generous in their time and willlingness to sign all the books they were presented with. I don't know if these ladies have met each other previously, but they seemed as though they were close friends whose friendships extended back many years. Daughter and I are both glad that we decided to attend and look forward to reading more of their many books (which I have listed below with as many links as I could find).
Our other reason for attending, was to see what authors are really like. What do they do at these events. Are they approachable. Are they still real people. Oh yes, they are so real, and fun and everything we imagined them to be. We are both looking forward to attending more such events, both of authors we are familiar with, but also of those we haven't heard of previously. Hopefully daughter will post comments on her blog and then I can link with it.
It was pleasure to meet Mandy, blogger at Edge of Seventeen, and one of the co-ordinators of this event.
And yes, the cake was delicious, chocolate with gobs of gooey, sweet frosting.
Browse Inside Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter
Read more about her upcoming book: Wayfarer
Visit R. J. Anderson's blog
Lesley Livingston - Toronto, Ontario author
Browse Inside Wondrous Strange
Browse Inside Darklight
Visit Lesley Livingston's blog
Alyxandra Harvey - Ontario author
My Love Lies Bleeding
The Drake Chronicles: (this is cool, the series has its own website)
Read an excerpt: Hearts at Stake
Read a descripton: Blood Feud (due out June 2010)
Visit Alyxandra Harvey's website
Kelley Armstrong - Ontario author
Otherworld Series:
Read an Excerpt: Bitten Read my review
Read an Excerpt: Stolen
Read an Excerpt: Dime Store Magic
Read and Excerpt: Industrial Magic
Read an Excerpt: Haunted
Read an Excerpt: Broken
Read an Excerpt: No Humans Involved
Read an Excerpt: Personal Demon
Read an Excerpt: Living with the Dead
Read an Excerpt: Frostbitten
Read an Excerpt: Tales of the Otherworld
Read and Excerpt: Men of the Otherworld
Waking the Witch (due out August 3, 2010)
Darkest Powers Trilogy: visit Chloe's website and learn more about the series.
Read an Excerpt: The Summoning
Read an Excerpt: The Awakening
Read an Excerpt: The Reckoning
Nadia Stafford Series:
Exit Strategy
Read and Excerpt: Made to Be Broken
Visit Kelley Armstrong's website
3 comments:
It sounds like a great day. Always a wonderful experience to meet an author, I have to contain myself from becoming all 'stage struck' (Or do we only become that with actors?)
Thanks for this lovely recap, and for the photos as well! I never got to see the cake before it was cut (although I did enjoy eating it!) so I'm delighted to see a picture of it here.
Thanks for coming out to Turning Pages! And to satisfy your curiosity about how long we've known each other -- Lesley and I have met 3-4 times before, and she'd also met Kelley on other occasions, but neither of us had met Alyxandra, I'd never met Kelley, and I think Alyxandra and Kelley had met only once. Hmmm, maybe we need to plot all that out on a map? :)
Thanks SO much for the recap! It was really heartening! Love the pics, thanks for posting.
And it was truly awesome to meet you and your daughter.
Cool blog :) :)
Let's keep in touch.
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