Thus far most people seem to like Demon's Covenant, and the tour went off very well despite my amazing disaster-attracting abilities.
No, really. Picture this: Holly Black and I stop for a swift sandwich at a Greek restaurant. I touch - MERELY TOUCH - a Coke machine.
COKE MACHINE: *explodes into a fountain of water*
HOLLY: What did you do?!
RESTAURANT OWNERS: What did she do?!
SARAH: Merely touched it! Merely touched it!
FOUNTAIN: gushes on
SARAH: I am so sorry. This must be like going on tour with Godzilla.
HOLLY: I am never bored.
Destruction aside, it was an great, great tour. I had huge amounts of fun. If you were part of it, thank you a trillion!
Small thing: at the bookstore Murder by the Book, where we had a truly fabulous event, thanks to the amazing booksellers, they did have a policy that you had to buy our books or another book at signing time, which is totally fair: bookselling, like publishing, is a business with narrow margins indeed, and they were absolutely lovely to host us for the occasion! But I do feel bad, because I did not know about it to warn beforehand (which is my own fault, I should check these things!) and so for the people we saw who did not get their books signed, I will send you signed bookplates if you would like them to thank you for coming and apologise for my own remissness? (At this point said people say 'Pshaw, we were there for Ms. Black, and we do not read your blog!' To which I respond meekly: 'Well, but I wished to try...')
I can't even pick a favourite event: I loved them all. I was given presents! I have a fanmix CD I am now listening to, and a beautiful necklace with 'Nothing lasts forever, except demons, of course' on it that I wore to our last event, a notebook, amazing pieces of art, one starring Annabel and the Golf Club of Doom, and a Mae doll with pink hair who currently rules the Goblin Market of my bed. And I met two gentlemen I made captains of Team Jamie, signed printouts of the short stories - I don't think I realised how much you guys liked the short stories, I must write more! - and just got to talk about my books and writing to interested, interesting people all the live-long.
Lots of people told me they read this blog, which reminded me of why I do this internet thing. (Sometimes I forget that, as when this person, who has taken to emailing me every negative tweet and journal post about me they find, emails me once more. It's so insulting... I obsessively google myself, I can totally find them on my own.) But I do think that the internet is excellent because it's a place where we can all talk about our interests, sometimes with the people who create said interests! Lots of people told me which characters they did or didn't want to get together, or quoted bits from the books to me, or had come an awfully long way (from Iowa to Chicago, or Louisiana to Houston). I have really unusual turnout for a writer who is in no way a big deal, and this is because I am lucky, and all my fans are astonishingly wonderful. In conclusion, it was fabulous.
Most fabulous of all was my tour partner, Ms. Holly Black, who was not only bringing to the table an awesome book, not only had most excellent advice about writing, kidnapping and stealing people's money, but also answered questions beautifully so I felt like people got information as well as my Crazed Bibbling.
Some of our answers: neither of us have muses, we wish we did, we write the books on our own and forget our characters getting away from us, we can barely get our characters off the couch because they know something bad will happen to them. It took Holly five years and me nine months to write our first published books.
Sometimes we swapped questions, as when we were asked our favourite characters and talked about our favourites from each others' books. We each picked the older brothers.
HOLLY: ALAN. I hear people saying 'oh Alan, he's such a liar, all he does is lie' and I just don't understand it. I mean yes. All he does is lie. FANTASTICALLY WELL. As a writer I have to admire that. And I just want something good to happen to him. *accusing look at me*
SARAH: BARRON. I love the force of amoral chaos character. He makes things so exciting! He comes around to your place and asks if he can make himself a cup of tea, and then you go into your kitchen five minutes later and he's set a fire and bitten off your kitten's head and he says 'Where's the sugar?'
HOLLY: Now I see why you like Barron so much. You think he's just like you.
I find this remark unfair. I have never once bitten off the head of any of Holly's cats.
At certain tour points, we had Unexpected Special Guests. To wit, Awesome Authors Saundra Mitchell, Shanna Swendson, and Ally Carter. This meant many good things, as for instance that on my last day in Dallas, Ally and I went on an epic doughnut quest, and ended up bearing back to Holly in triumph a box with the slogan 'MAKE LIFE DELICIOUS' on it before I went off to the Leeds Book Awards ceremony and Holly went off to Book Expo America.
I admit I was a little jealous, since there are free books to be had at BEA, but at the awards ceremony I was not only delighted to be a finalist, and to meet awesome librarians, booksellers and authors, but I was given a group of schoolkids who were going to do a Demon's Lexicon presentation for me. I got to sit and watch while they presented! It was awesome, and they did a great job. I announced that they were my army, and I was going to take them away with me, and I told them stories about all my criminal deeds until they were cruelly stolen from me. (It - is possible Holly Black has been a bad influence.)
But many things are yet afoot. I have pictures to prove it. Some pictures are the pictures of handsome models I get to choose among for Alan for my US cover of the third book, which I cannot show you but which I find very exciting! Some are these pictures:
Here is a place to have a readalong of Covenant and chat. The password is zombieboyfriend, and the time to chat will be Saturday, May 29 at 4PM GMT. I am passing up going dancing to chat, so I hope people will chat with me. ;)
The lovely Marmalade Fish forum has a new section called the Ask Sarah forum. In the marmalade fish forum you can frolic and discuss all manner of things, and on the Ask Sarah bit of it, I am pledged to answer all your questions.
And this Sunday at the Big Smoke Writing Factory I am teaching at a speculative fiction writing workshop. My session will be about writing urban fantasy, something that is dear to my heart, and is currently a bunch of notes entitled 'Finding the Magic In Among the Milk Bottles.'
And as another Thing I Am Doing Online, the Mundie Moms are hosting me and Holly Black for a chat in the final, virtual end to our tour on Monday May 31! I will add a link to this post when I have one. (ETA: It will be at 9 pm EST.) (ETA: here is that link)
Then I believe I have ten peaceful days. In which I will finish rewriting the third book before flying off to England to do Covenant things there... on which More To Come...
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →