Fierce Reads ABQ Event Recap

I’ve been looking forward to this event since I found out about it ~a month ago. Even though I’m a big reader, I’ve never been to an author event. Everything worked out for me to go to this event! It was on my side of town at a bookstore I knew of and it was on my day off! Hurray!

I got to the event a bit early. Alamosa Books is a really awesome local indie bookstore here in town. Their focus is children’s/teen books! Yep, that’s right a whole bookstore for kid’s books. I love going in there and browsing. Not to mention, they recently expanded and bought another storefront to house their teen and the few adult books they carry and have a place to hold book events. There were very few people there when the event started (like 6 of us) so they moved us right up to the front!

I failed and didn’t take notes so I’m going to jot down as many things as I can remember about the event.

• Ann talked about the work that went into her world building. She might not put everything in the book but she knows what’s going on in the world. She also researches science and tries to incorporate plausible science into her book. [I LOVED that. You know how I feel about world building.]
• Jessica talked about how hard she fought for Cody in Unremembered. Her editor didn’t want to keep in in the story but she refuses to cut him. Turns out many, many people loved him!
• Jessica shared with us FIRST about a prequel novella coming out next year for the Unremembered series.
• Leigh told us that she wishes she had plotted/thought things out a bit more for Shadow and Bone. She really wanted to have a floating castle thing in the sky for book 2 but there was NO way it would work because the magical parameters in the world wouldn’t allow for it.
• Ginnifer told us about how world building isn’t just limited it sci-fi/fantasy. Every book does it. Even contemporary. You have to set the scene. Where do people eat, live, shop, work, etc.? ALL of that is world building.

I had to be conservative with what I bought because of my job situation but I knew I had to buy something.

My Pretties

Signed Book Bag

Signed Copy of Crewel

Signed Copy of Unremembered

Bookmarks from the Store

Swag

Preview of Unforgotten

It was really hard to choose what to buy! I wanted to take home everything! I ended up buying a copy of Unremembered and Crewel because I had not read them yet. In “preparing” for this event I didn’t read a copy of them from the library because the summaries didn’t totally interest me. Hearing Jessica and Gennifer talk about them changed my mind though.

I did read Shadow and Bone and Enclave (reviews to come) before the event. I wasn’t totally sold on Shadow and Bone (too much romance for me) BUT Leigh was really awesome and wonderful so I’ll have to give Siege and Storm a try in the future. I ended up liking Enclave more than I was expecting to so after hearing Ann talk about the world building and science she puts into her books, I know I need to continue with the books.

All in all it was a really fun event. I didn’t really talk to people (I’m very awkwardly shy) but it was really nice to be around bookish people and people who love YA books! I’ll have to keep an eye out for more book events in town.