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Hoops,
Reading, Signing, Talking
I'm finally back in New York City. My brain has at last caught up
with my body. This weekend we went to the first Liberty
game of the season. Well, okay, not first of the season
because the season proper doesn't start for a week or two. First
game of the pre-season. (Nope, this stuff doesn't makes
any sense to me either.) The Liberty
played great. Up against last year's WNBA
champions, the Seattle Storm,
we won! And we didn't just win, we did it convincingly, spending
most of the game at least five points ahead. They were a gazillion
inches taller than us, totally outrebounded us, and we won the game
with solid defence. Happiness. (No, I don't care that it was only
a pre-season game and thus doesn't count.)
The Artemis Fowl and Co.
("Co." being me and Scott)
event was fab. Its fabulousness was clear from the very beginning
when the praise monster (all hail!) manifested itself in the form
of Peter
Glassman, the owner of Books
of Wonder, who greeted me with the most amazingly effusive gush
about my book, which he was three-quarters of the way through reading.
I caught the words "brilliant" and "writing"
in close proximity to each other. Blush.
The event consisted of me and Scott doing a short reading from Magic
or Madness and Midnighters
1: The Secret Hour respectively. I read the
scene where Reason steps through the door from the summer
of Sydney to the winter
of New York City and sees snow for the first time; Scott read
the scene from the first Midnighters book where Jessica
discovers the blue time and rain for the first time. We hadn't planned
to read such similar scenes. Actually until we read them out loud
side by side we hadn't realised they were similar. (For
those wondering, that would be me plagiarising Scott.)
Eoin
Colfer didn't read from any of his books, instead he told a
very funny story about why you shouldn't tease six year olds, even
if they do have big heads, not all their teeth, and in their swimming
goggles resemble Golem from Lord of the Rings. He also
explained in detail how "hurling" and "jumper"
don't mean the same thing in Ireland as they do in the US. This
gave me an excellent later segue to promote my book as educational
because it has a glossary of
Australian English at the back.
Next there was Q & A. All the questions but one were asked by
the actual demographic of our books. This was very exciting for
me because I spend a great deal of time thinking and talking about
children's and young adult literature, but almost always with adults,
hardly ever with the people for whom it is written. My first and
only question was the first asked: "Is
there really no snow in Australia?" To which I answered
that yes there is, just not a lot, and mostly in places like the
Snowy
Mountains and Tasmania.
It's very easy to grow up in Australia without ever seeing it.
Scott's
one question came towards the end, "When is the third Midnighters
book coming out?" You'll find the answer here.
All the other questions were for Eoin and they were all asked by
kids (mostly boys) who displayed an intimate knowledge of his books
and a huge thirst for more: there were many variations on the when-is-the-next-book-coming-out
and will-there-be-more-books-in-the-series questions. For a writer
those are very sweet indeed.
After the questions were all asked, the astoundingly large audience
(given that it was mother's day) formed a very long queue and we
signed lots and lots of books. This was a big surprise because frankly
I was expecting to sign at most four or five books (for my friends
who came: Hey Liesa!
Hey Eloise!
Hey Tui!
Hey Barry!
Hey Will & Alice!),
but for over an hour there was a steady trickle of people I didn't
know who wanted me to sign for them. Astounding! Wonderful! Happy
making! Most of my signees were girls who looked incredibly young—twelve
at the very most. One of them had already started reading my book
and was impatient for me to hurry up and sign it so she could get
back to reading. Happy sigh.
Next to me all the Midnighters fans had emerged to get
Scott to sign their books and ask why they had to wait such a long,
long, long, time for the next Midnighters book? And why
were there only going to be three books? Scott was able to placate
them by pointing to Uglies,
and So
Yesterday as possible substitutes while they waited.
Eoin (turns out it's pronounced "Owen" not "Ian"
as I had guessed—oops!) Colfer signed and signed and signed
and signed. He was charming, entertaining, and wonderful with his
fans, spending time chatting to every single one. There were a lot
of them and most seemed to have every book he'd ever written, held
in teetering stacks supported only by their small, wee, tiny, little
hands. In fact, one kid came up to Scott and me after having his
mountainous pile of Colfer books signed: he let out a weary sigh,
slid our books onto the table, asked that we sign in exhausted tones,
and explained that his back hurt from carrying so many books.
Quite a few of the kids who'd come to see Eoin Colfer also wound
up buying Scott's and my books. When the event was over we gave
Peter a list of all the other writers we'd be more than happy to
do an event with: Diana
Wynne-Jones, Ursula
Le Guin, Garth
Nix, Phillip
Pullman, J. K. Rowling,
Jonathan Stroud
etc. etc.
In the pauses between people wanting me to sign, I signed for Books
of Wonder. First the lovely staff brought about thirty books, which
I duly signed. Then they took those away and brought thirty more,
which I also signed, expressing surprise at how many there were.
"Oh," Sarah said, "these are the mail-order books.
There are plenty more. We haven't even got up to the store stock
yet. I love your book, we've been handselling it like you wouldn't
believe." Were ever sweeter words heard from the mouth of a
bookseller? A brief pause while yours truly blushed, coughed, and
thanked Sarah profusely, then returned to signing. I have never
signed so many books in my life. I loved it!
Another huge thrill was meeting Cassandra
Claire. She's just gotten a big, prestigious, three-book deal,
agented by Barry Goldblatt, but much more importantly Cassie is
the author of The
Secret Diary of Aragorn Son Of Arathorn (and other
secret diaries) which was circulating all over the internet
a few years back and completely cracked me up every time someone
sent it to me, which they did a lot. It continues to crack me up
every time I think of the phrase "still not king". It
was grouse being able to thank her in person and to sign a copy
of Magic or Madness
for her. Cassie Claire bought my book!
Oh, and Eoin Colfer showed me the worm in his eye ball which is
exquisitely gross. I want one too!
It were a good weekend.
New York City, 9 May 2005
©
2005 Justine Larbalestier
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