As soon as I heard that Laurell was going to have a discussion and book signing in Michigan, I took the day off from work. I tried getting my friends, any of them to get the day off from work, but none could, which I was cool with since none of them read her books. So I called my grandma on Monday and asked if she had any plans for Tuesday. She didn't, so I told her good, that I was picking her up at 3, buying her dinner and we were going to meet an author that I loved.
After working Monday night, and watching a heartbreaking Red Wings loss in triple overtime, I came home from work determined to get as much sleep as possible, and got nearly 5 hours (which was about an hour more than I thought that I'd get). I'd also stopped at Karen and Kelly's on the way home to borrow Glinda the Garman (I so want one of those) since I sometimes have a little problem with directions and I really didn't want to get lost on the way there.
I actually managed to get out of the house when I wanted to, which is an amazing feat in and of itself because getting me out of bed with less than 6 hours of sleep is usually pretty hard, but I was excited so that helped. Picked up Grandma around 3 and headed out to Ann Arbor.
Of all days for it to rain, it just totally poured once we got down south of Flint. Like, poured so hard that I slowed down and my wipers on high could barely keep up. But we made it to Borders a little before 5. I took my two books in, got them stickered and got my wristband. There were 50 of each wristband, and I got a red one, which was the third group that was going to be called.
Knowing that caffeine would be necessary to keep me going, I stopped over at the cafe and had my first Seattle's Best coffee in three and a half years.
I'd forgotten that when you ordered a mocha that you got a real stick of chocolate across the top!!! That was the best part of the mocha, I was seriously in heaven for about 5 minutes.
Grandma and I headed back to the back of the story where they had everything set up. Grandma found a comfortable chair to sit in and watch the people and I joined the gathering crowd.
We only had to wait about an hour, and the gathering crowd was quite interesting to watch. There was everyone from goth, to the older gentleman with the entire suitcase of hardcover Anita Blake books without the dust jackets on them. He was going to be waiting for a while, because the first time through the line you could only get
Blood Noir personalized and one other book signed. I took
Mistral's Kiss with me as my second book.
Laurell, her husband Jon (who is totally cool), and head of security Charles showed up slightly after 6, due to Michigan natives being unable to drive any better in the rain than they can in St Louis. We had about a half hour of question and answer, where we found out that the next book is going to just be Anita, Edward, Olaf and Bernardo and that the covers of the books are moving away from female body parts because well, guys like these books too (actually, I was surprised at how many guys were there) and that reading them in public can be dangerous to their well being if little old ladies think that they're reading porn. Then they're likely to get hit with umbrellas or purses, so it's all for their safety.
After the half hour of Q&A it was time to line up. I was in the third color group, so I just hung around watching the people for a while and then decided that it would be a good idea to line up before they called the red wristband people, that way I would be near the front of the group.
Now Borders was smart here. You have a few hundred people show up for a book signing that is in the SciFi/fantasy genre, where else would you weave the line, but right through that section of the store. And when you were in that part of the line, you were waiting there for a while, so you got a good chance to look at the books. Smart marketing technique there. I ended up in line by this other woman from the Kalamazoo area and a couple from Columbus, Ohio. There's some dedicated fans. We had a good hour to chat in line, and it was interesting. I found out that the lady from Columbus had just been on sick leave and had read all of the Drake Sister novels by Christine Feehan. We talked about the joys of lending books to coworkers too.
We got so close, when Laurell's arm started acting up so we had to have an ice break which means another Q&A session. I was close enough to the front of the line this time to actually have a question answered that I thought of while we were in line. Last time we'd seen one of the characters had been about 3 months ago and his wife was 4 months pregnant and the baby was in danger. So I asked when we were going to see Larry again and she thought for a minute, and then realized that there was no reason for him to not be in the next book, except for the fact that he'd end up dead, and we don't want to widow Tammy and leave the unborn child an orphan, so probably in the book after the next Anita book.
It was finally my turn to step up and while the group ahead of me was getting their books signed, I got a chance to talk to Jon for a few minutes and I mentioned that it was my first time that I was able to come to an event, and that when the last tour occurred, when they visited Portland, OR, I sent a 16 year old boy to go get the book signed for me. Funny, both Jon and Charles had remembered Jon-Michael. I was quite amused by that fact. We chatted about jewelry then because Jon liked my necklace and was telling me how he made jewelry as a hobby and had made his mom a chain-mail necklace. That would be awesome to see. Then I got to go up and have Laurell sign my books. As she was making sure that she spelled my name correctly, we actually talked about how hard people have spelling simple names, like apparently, people misspell Hamilton all the time. Charles said that there's only one spelling of Charles too, but that somehow, people manage to misspell that too.
Picture time took a minute though, since I had a high-end digital camera and had to tell the designated picture taking Border's employee how to work it, since you can't look at the digital viewscreen when you're actually taking the picture, it makes you look through the viewfinder. And that was the end of my booksigning experience.
It was 9pm by that point, and having had only stopped at McDonald's on the way down, Grandma and I headed to the Friday's across the street. There were actually quite a few people coming and going from the signing. We had a nice dinner, and were shocked when the people at the table next to us just walked out on their bill that was around $40. Some people just suck. After paying, we headed home and as we drove past Michigan Stadium, I made sure to boo and hiss at it. A girl's gotta have some standards, ya know ;)
Labels: Blood Noir, book signing, Borders, daily, Laurell K Hamilton, trips
