Tag: authors

Posted in Conferences & Events

Book Expo ’17: The Rundown

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur: I started at my new library (still in the same library system, new community), went to BookExpo, spent four days getting our library, which had been closed for renovations, ready for reopening, and sadly, dealing with the loss of a friend. The next week and a half brings three graduations and the start of Summer Reading. I will be drinking a lot of coffee.

It’s about two weeks in the past, but this year’s BookExpo America deserves some love. Here are some highlights:

  • The children’s author dinner at the Princeton Club was wonderful. The author lineup was fantastic: Byron Pitts (Be the One: Six True Stories of Teens Overcoming Hardship with Hope); Tochi Onyebuchi (Beasts Made of Night); Mitali Perkins (You Bring the Distant Near); author and illustrator husband and wife powerhouse Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome (Before She Was Harriet), Dusti Bowling (Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus), and Mo Willems (Welcome). Each author (and illustrator) spoke about their books, and the publishers were kind enough to provide tote bags and copies of each book, which the authors graciously signed after their panel.

Every author and illustrator spoke with such passion about their book; I wanted to go home and read them all in one night. They’re currently waiting for me to get to them – more to come. Mo Willems taught us how to draw Piggie, from Elephant and Piggie, and I even found the power of speech to speak with him about the power of using the Pigeon when running a storytime workshop for parents a couple of years ago. What an evening.

  • Getting to sit in on Holly Black and Ryan Graudin’s talk about their upcoming books, The Cruel Prince (Holly Black) and Invictus (Ryan Graudin). Ryan Graudin talked about the influence of her Doctor Who fandom in writing this new novel, which shot it immediately up on my TBR. Holly Black could write the ingredients on a box of toothpaste, and I’d wait in line to read it. Both ladies were funny – Holly Black discussing her deadlines was laugh-out-loud hilarious – and engaging, and I’m thrilled that I got to see them.

  • The signings! So many book signings! I tried to make as  many as I could. There were tons of in-booth signings as well as the ticketed signings, making authors really accessible to everyone.
  • Discovering new books by smaller presses. I love to discover what the smaller and indie presses are putting out there.
  • Getting a shout-out from Gabrielle Union when she made an obscure DC Comics character reference and I whooped. Come on, when someone makes a Mr. Mxyzptlk reference, you acknowledge that. She appeared on a grown-up book panel (I know! I even got big girl books!) along with Kate Moore (Radium Girls), Zoe Quinn, who tackles GamerGate and cyberstalking and cyberbullying in Crash Override, librarian extraordinaire Nancy Pearl, who’s written her first novel, George and Lizzie, Gabrielle Zevin (Young Jane Young), and Robin Sloan (Sourdough).

All in all, it was a good Expo.

 

Posted in Fantasy

My Eventbrite-Inspired Dream Author Panel

Posted on by Rosemary Kiladitis

Do you guys know Eventbrite? It’s a self-service ticketing platform where you can find people and plan events all over the world. I register for my Urban Librarians Unite events through Eventbrite all the time; in the world that helps people find and plan events. Anyway, Eventbrite asked me to come up with a dream author panel – how do I do that? It’s like selecting a favorite book (or 5), THERE ARE SO MANY.

If you know me, you know that Neil Gaiman is the constant. The given. Always, just like Snape. So I had to build the panel around Neil. I had Tolkien and CS Lewis – hey, it’s my dream panel, they can Skype in from the afterlife. I considered Gail Carriger and Cherie Priest. I drove myself crazy until I settled on a group of authors whose works I love and who all gel together pretty well, with a moderator that would take this panel from awesome to incredible. I give you: The Dream Panel.

Wil Wheaton narrates and is included in Ready Player One, and he’s a sci-fi/fantasy fan who is witty, asks thoughtful questions, and is hilarious, making him a perfect moderator for this bunch.

So now that I’ve pulled this group together, I think one of the main themes of the discussion could be setting fantasy in a realistic setting. I’m awful at coming up with questions, but a few I managed to wrack my brain to come up with include:

  • We have new gods: namely, gods of entertainment and technology, in Gaiman’s American Gods. How do these new gods figure in your (Doctorow, Neuvel, Cline) worlds? Could they find a place in these worlds?
  • Can you envision your novels taking place in the same universe at the same time? What would Cory Doctorow’s Homeland Security do, or the Nameless Man from Waking Gods, if the Armada spaceships invaded one morning? Sylvain, would they get Themis up and running in time?
  • What inspires you to base your writing in the near-future or present?
  • Your books all seem to be so well-researched. Do you outline what you’re writing about and research as you go, or do you prepare beforehand? (It’s the librarian in me, I need to know!)

Who’s on your dream panel? I’d love to hear! And I’d love to hear how you create your own interview questions, because I want to get better at this!

Thanks again to Eventbrite for the inspiration for this post; now I want to plan another one, maybe even branch out into favorite characters. In the meantime, you can search for book conferences in your area by going to Eventbrite’s website; signing up is free!