June 21, 2012

Richelle Mead at B&N Third Street

Hello, eveyone! Wow it has been an amazing and crazy weekend. My brother’s baby was born and I made a whirlwind drive up to northern California. I was awesome and no words can describe how much I love my niece. Anyway – upon my return I had a fun event to look forward to. Richelle Mead, author of such awesome series as Vampire Academy, Dark Swan, and the Succubus series was heading to Santa Monica for a signing.

I really kind of hate the B&N procedure for signings though. You have to buy the book and get a wristband on the same day as the signing. This becomes an issue when the event is on a weekday and also when the store is far from you, and this event was both. It took some plotting and lots of driving but we got to B&N at 9am, bought our books, came home for a few hours, then drove 45 min back to Santa Monica, where we got to stand in line in a really hot place for about 2 hours. As uncomfortable as it was, it was totally worth it for Richelle.

the richelle display at the entrance to the store

more richelle books upstairs in ya

I’ve actually seen Richelle once before at a Comic Con a few years ago. Since I already had some of my Vampire Academy books signed, the only dilemma now was deciding which books to get signed this time (she has a 3 book limit). Finally decided on the Vampire Academy Guide and the first and last Succubus books.

Since we had gotten there so early that morning, we had A bands, which I was very grateful for. There was quite a turnout and I think I heard one of the B&N employees say that they though maybe 140 people were there. They seated us a little after 7pm and Richelle came in pretty soon after everyone was settled. We made it to the very front row. :)

richelle with the great b&n employee (think his name is shane)

Richelle is pretty much what you expect – sweet, funny, and humble. She started off with a reading from The Golden Lily. It involved Sydney, Adrian, a guy named Wolfe, and some nun-chucks. :) I have some video of Richelle which I am trying to upload for you guys but Youtube uploading is slow. I may have to do a separate post of the videos.

After the reading Richelle took questions from the audience. Someone asked if she would ever write another story with some of the series that have ended (like Dark Swan and Succubus) and Richelle said that she likes to never say never. While she doesn’t have any immediate plans for anything, she said that anything is possible (yay!). When asked when she knew that she was going to write a VA spinoff series, she said maybe about halfway into it. She said that she had created this world that she loved and was interested in exploring still but that she wanted a change from writing from Rose’s point of view.

More questions then signing time! I am glad we were at the front because that meant we were first in the signing line, too. When I got up to Richelle I basically just gushed about how much I loved the Succubus series and how happy I was with the ending. She was super nice and didn’t look at me like I was crazy at all.

signing my friend’s va books

We finally left so that everyone else could get their books signed. Even though we had to drive to Santa Monica twice and then stand in a long, hot line, it was so worth it. We had a great time and Richelle was awesome. We also accosted Melissa de la Cruz and Margie Stohl after the signing. They had stopped by to say hi and we caught them wandering around afterwards. Hope we didn’t scare you, ladies.

I had a fantastic time. Thank you, Richelle, for writing awesome books and being a cool person to boot. I definitely recommend going to one of her signings if you get a chance to. That’s it for me. Signing off now!