Top 10 Books I Found at BEA

Over a week (or 2?) later and I am STILL recovering from BEA. As always, it was amazing couple of days and I am still sorting through everything. That being said, I do have a few titles that have stood out for me that I am pretty excited about, so without further ado, here is my list of BEA books I can’t wait to read.

1. Jepp, Who Defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion, October 2012) – The first book on my list, I actually had the chance to read last week and I was so glad I did. This was the first book I picked up, and it was completely on a whim. This is a historical fiction YA that takes place in the late 1500′s and follows the life of a dwarf named Jepp who ends up as a court dwarf at Coudenberg Palace and it throws his world into turmoil. From meeting other dwarfs for the first time, being forced to jump out of pies and crossing paths with nobles, princesses and even Tycho Brahe himself (not this Tycho, this one!), Jepp learns to defy the stars and take his destiny into his own hands. Honestly, this was just a well told story that made me hit the books to learn more. Read it!
2. The Cupcake Diaries by Katherine Kallinis and Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne (HarperOne, 2011) – I have to admit, before I picked up this book, I had never heard of DC Cupcakes. I picked it up because not only do I love cupcakes and thought a cupcake book would be fun, but they were giving away FREE cupcakes with the book. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have to tell you that it was the most amazing cupcake I have ever put in my mouth and it has made me go on a cupcake crusade. Part memoir, part cookbook, this book is awesome, and not just because the one recipe I have tried so far was not only easy to follow and gave great baking tips, but the cupcakes turned out delicious. If you love cupcakes, baking, or have taken the plunge and started your own business, then you will enjoy this book.
3. The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate by Scott Nash (Candlewick, September 2012) – I LOVE pirates and this book just seems really fun. The back copy states that “…between outwitting villainous crows and outrunning murderous weasels, it’s all Blue Jay and the rest of the crew can do to stay together and stay alive.” The ink illustrations bring to life Blue Jay and his crew in all of their pirate glory. The final book will be in color, so I am looking forward to seeing everything finished! This looks like a great pick for the young swashbucklers in your life!
4. Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick, August, 2012) - Another Candlewick book. It is safe to say that I LOVE this publishing house and the beautiful books they make. Splendors and Glooms is about Master puppeteer Grisini, two children, Lizzie and Parsefall, and Clara, a local rich girl (who hired Grisini to entertain at her birthday party and goes missing). As you might suspect, the blame is cast upon Grisini and by extension, Lissie and Parsefall. Enter an old rivalry and a witch with a deadly inheritance and a great mystery is born. This was a book that the employees at the Candlewick booth said they were really excited about and not to miss it!
5. The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, 2012) – This is the first book of the Dreamblood series. Since I am not sure how to explain it, here is a look at the back copy. I haven’t read it yet, but it sounded pretty interesting. In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and among the shadows of it’s cobbled streets wait the Gatherers–the keepers of this peace. Their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe… and kill those judged corrupt.”
   It sounds just crazy enough to be awesome and I can’t wait to get to it!
6. Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House, 2011) – This book has been out for a while, but when I picked it up and read what it was about, it seemed right up my alley (not to mention the great cover!). I am a big fan of food and memoirs. Throw them together and I am a happy camper. This book is a look at Gabrielle’s life and how she ended up opening her acclaimed New York restaurant, Prune. If food is your thing, then this is your book.
7. Beta by Rachel Cohn (Hyperion, October 2012), “Elysia is created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen-year-old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of a teenage clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to exist. Elysia’s purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth.” Need I say more? This is the first in a series, so I have high hopes that this is as exciting as it sounds. I know that cloning isn’t a new thing in science fictions, but maybe Beta will give it a new twist that lets it stand on its own. Hyperion doesn’t usually let me down!
8. Colin Fischer by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz (Razorbill, November 2012) – Razorbill is an imprint of Penguin and this is one of their upcoming middle reader books. I am really looking forward to reading this one with my little brother. “Colin is Wayne Connelley’s best-and only-hope of proving his innocence after being accused of blowing up a birthday cake in the school cafeteria.” I love a good mystery, especially one that involves cake and quirky Sherlock Holmes types (“Colin cannot stand to be touched. He does not like the color blue. He needs index cards to recognize facial expressions.“)
9. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken (Hyperion, December 2012) – This book just sounds dark and creepy, which can be incredibly exciting. Here is what I learned from the back of the book: When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something frightening enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government ‘rehabilitation camp.’ She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they can’t control.” The book seems to follow into her teen years when she eventually escapes Thurmond and ends up on the run. I really need to know what this “something” is and what is so dangerous. I am saving this one to read when I am in the mood for a good scare!
10. Princess Academy: Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, August 2012) – So I picked this up having not read the first Princess Academy book. Of course I went out and bought the first one and I am in the middle of reading it with with my little sister. It is SO fun. I haven’t read the back of this one yet, because I don’t want any spoilers, but I have a feeling that Hale will not disappoint me.

There are a lot more books, but these are my top 10. Keep checking back for reviews and giveaways! We have some great books to share from BEA!

Housekeeping

A few updates:

We’re up for the Independent Book Blogger Awards.  You should probably vote for us.  If we win, we get to go to BEA where we’ll pick up lots of new books to review for your reading pleasure.

Vote

We’ve also started Tumblring.  Yes, I made that word up.  Just go with it.

We Got Apps

Out of the many YA vampire books that have emerged post-Twilight, Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series is one of the most popular. Though the concept is fairly ridiculous. It’s a boarding school!  Of Vampires!  But it features strong, interesting characters (mostly), fast-paced action, and a fresh and detailed Vampire mythology.  The series stars Rose, a tough, sarcastic heroine who is more than capable of taking care of herself, but still has a lot to learn.  Her love interests include Dimitri, her super-intense trainer who is 7 years her senior (appropriate!), and Adrian, the charismatic bad boy.  I could do without Rose’s whiny and needy best friend Lissa, but the rest of the characters flesh out the world nicely.  The series went on a bit too long for my taste, but I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good soapy, yet action-packed, YA series.  So when it was announced Penguin was launching an app called “The World of Richelle Mead,” I decided to check it out.  It’s, to my knowledge, the first app based on a YA book or series.  It opens up so many possibilities for authors and publishers to reach out and interact with readers. Plus it was free, so why not?

The first section of the app is the bookshelf, presumably the impetus behind this whole venture.  This is where fans can purchase enhanced e-book versions of the Vampire Academy and spinoff Bloodlines series.  These e-books are designed to look like actual books (pretty!) and contain extra behind the scenes info from the author herself.  I don’t blame Penguin or Mead for adding extra content as way to get people to buy e-books directly from them, but it’s kind of crappy to do that to the hardcore fans who presumably already own the books.  I mean at least with Pottermore (which I assume will become an app soon) the background info is separate from the eventual e-books (and free!). The e-books will also link to any tweets or Facebook posts that fellow app users have made about the book.  I personally find that to be useless and uninteresting, but your mileage may vary.

The second section is all about the characters.  Click on a locket and it will tell you all about that character.  You can also find out the relationship between two characters by dragging their lockets together.  It’s a beautifully designed page, but since the character bios only include info from the books, I assume that this feature will only be useful for readers bypassing the original series and jumping straight into the spinoff series.  Although, if you sway your tablet from side to side then you can make ALL of the lockets swing wildly off the page.  This provides whole seconds of fun.

Next is the obligatory author page.  There’s a brief bio as well Mead’s twitter feed and a few short video interviews.  It’s fine, but there’s really not much to say as I don’t think fans will be spending a lot of time here.

Lastly we have the community section.  This contains polls, links to fan communities on Facebook and twitter, and a VA news page.  There’s also a world map that posts the locations of everyone currently reading one of the enhanced e-books.  I find it creepy in a Big Brother is watching sort of way.  Now I’m not much for joining communities (although I am for watching Community), but it seems like they could do a lot more with fan interaction.

Actually, that seems to be the theme for the entire enterprise: they could do more.  The app is fine, but doesn’t provide much in the way of activity. There could be games and quizzes and who knows what else!  I’m not planning on buying any e-books, so I don’t anticipate spending more time on this app, but I’m curious to see who else jumps into this arena. What YA author do you think should get an app next?

OCD: Striking When You Least Expect It

Lately, I have had a bad case of OMG LET’S ORGANIZE ALL THE THINGS. Normally, this is not a problem for me, as I have enormous blinders when it comes to things like clutter and chaos. But every once in a while, it catches up to me, and all of a sudden, I find myself sitting at work stewing the unfairness of having to be chained to my desk when there are closets to be cleared out.

This weekend, my occasional OCD crept up on me when I was trying to figure out if we’d written about a particular book and realized that we have no way of easily finding something, other than our haphazard tags and whatnot. ‘No more!’ I declared to myself. ‘I will ORGANIZE ALL THE THINGS.’ And three hours later, we have a handy-dandy index of every book that we’ve reviewed, organized alphabetically by author, for your convenience and my sanity. It’s called the Master Reading List, it’ll live right up there on the top bar, and it will be updated semi-regularly.

Or, you know, whenever my OCD strikes again.

The Big 1-0-0

Last week, when I posted my latest book review, I looked up and realized that was our 99th post.

(Flailing ensued.)

We started this little blog as a whim, not sure if we’d keep the momentum up past the first week, but here we are, with a blog 100 posts strong, and we couldn’t be more excited! Celebration was in order. And so last Wednesday night (yes, it takes this long to get six people to write a post together), the Rampant Readers piled into Princess Consuela’s living room to participate in our first every cupcake night!

(You can just assume that there was more flailing when we first came up with that idea.)

To keep it somewhat on the topic of books, and to justify making a meal out of six different kinds of cupcake, we decided to each grab a different cookbook, make a different type of cupcake, and then see who had the best recipe. You know, for the education of others. And science. We’re givers around here.

(Also, as  it turned out, we brought our total cupcake count down from a gluttonous six types to a ladylike five, because Captain Awesome went rogue and made pie instead. There were no complaints from the rest of us.)

Our initial idea was to have a cupcake-off, presumably with fancy prizes and whatnot. I was looking forward to making someone carefully walk their cupcake from the kitchen to the table without dropping it like they do in those fancy cake competitions. This… didn’t so much happen. Instead, we just sat around and ate a lot and talked a lot and generally had a grand time. And really, isn’t that a better outcome? We didn’t want to have to come back on here in post 101 and update you that due to unforeseen cupcake competition shenanigans, one or more RR writers would no longer be able to read/write/walk upright. So instead of having a big unveiling of the winner, we are placing that crown on all our heads and instead telling you about the long, hard road to cupcake night. As anyone who has seen Cupcake Wars can attest, baking is serious business, and only the strong survive.

rhymenocerous: 

It was the perfect plan.  My mom gave me What’s New, Cupcake? by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson for Christmas.  So when the Rampant Reads crew announced our cupcake party, I was thinking, “Swell, I can use my special cupcake book.  It will be a gift from my mom that actually gets some use.  Unlike the Popcorn Cookbook I got last year.  Which is confusing, because how many recipes for popcorn can there be?  1) Unwrap popcorn package 2) put in microwave 3) enjoy.” And as you can see from the cover, the cupcake book is pretty cheery looking, with adorable ducks on it.  

“Oh, look how easy it is to create cupcakes disguised as squirrels!” I imagine Alan trilling.

“Darling, you can just whip up a batch of cupcakes festooned with lifelike flamingos in the afternoon before your children are home from soccer practice!” Karen probably replies.

Goddam liars.

2012 – A Lot to Be Excited About

Let's hope the Mayans were wrong.

It’s the time of year for lists. Many many lists. Magazines, newspapers, blogs, toilet paper companies, all of ‘em are doing their Best of 2011 lists. While I would love to know what the 5 Softest Toilet Papers of 2011 were, we thought it would be more interesting to look ahead to 2012 and talk about the books to be published that we are excited about reading. So, barring that end of the world thing that the Mayans predicted, here are a few books that each Rampant Reads lady can’t wait to get her greedy mitts on.

(NOTE: Rhymenocerous just had to go off to Russia while we wrote this post, so her picks aren’t in this list. Let’s all just be jealous and have a vodka shot in her honor.)

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Anatasia Beaverhausen:

The Fault in our Stars by John Green (Jan. 10)

I don’t have to wait long for this one and THANK GOODNESS. They released the first 2 chapters online (you can read them online here) and I am already hooked. The premise sounds a bit grim – girl with terminal cancer finds love – but John’s writing and superb characters will change your expectations and make this not to miss. Plus, he signed EVERY SINGLE PRE-ORDERED COPY, god bless him.

Black Heart by Holly Black (Apr. 3)

Holly is one of my favorite YA authors, as evidenced by my treasured signed copy of Tithe in my intro post. This is the 3rd book in her superb “Curse Workers” series and I can’t wait to see where she takes it.

The Doors of Stone (The Kingkiller Chronicles Day 3) by Patrick Rothfuss (Date ?)

Rothbuss exploded onto the fantasy scene with the first book in this series, The Name of the Wind, in 2009, and his brilliant writing and playing with fantasy tropes made it an instant hit with fantasy fans. I think even folks who aren’t fantasy people would eat this series up. Each book takes place over one day and I am DYING to finish this up. GIVE ME A RELEASE DATE!!

Dispatches from Dragon*Con

Over Labor Day weekend (yes, that Labor day weekend, the one two months ago… what of it?), Anastasia Beaverhausen and I got our geek on (do we ever really take it off?) and attended Dragon*Con 2011. In between discussing the finer points of Doctor Who and bonding with fellow True Blood fans while waiting in line to see the cast, we attended a number of panels on the con’s YA Literature track. So for those of you who didn’t spend your holiday weekend with 60,000 sci-fi and fantasy uber-fans, here are a few con highlights we thought you’d enjoy.

Harry Potter – From Page to Screen: (RS) This was a lot of people talking about how the books were better than the movies. Which… duh. But there were a few good points that came out of the discussion, and in general it was fun to sit around and hear other people talk about what they loved about the movies and what they wished they’d seen more of. A lot centered around the last movie, obviously, and one of the people on the panel said he’d have liked the movie a lot more if their special effects budget had been cut in half. Word. There was a lot of unnecessary action movie type things that really didn’t need to be there.

There was a lot of general hand-wringing about things that were changed in the movie, but for the most part this didn’t really bother me as much as it seemed to bother the rest of the world. I realize that things need to be changed not only for time, but just for the way a story is told on screen verses on page. Surprisingly, there were a few scenes that people actually liked better in the movie, and a few additions that veered off canon but were thought to be good adds. One in particular was the scene between the trio on the stairs right before Harry went to the forest, which everyone really enjoyed even if it wasn’t strictly canon.

So yeah, not much new stuff, but a nice look back at the movies.

The Hero’s Journey of Neville Longbottom: (RS) Okay, full disclosure – by the end of this panel, we’d pretty much crammed everyone in the series into the mold of the hero’s journey. But that’s okay. First of all, I adore Neville, so I was down with any panel where he was the featured topic of discussion. The topic at hand was also very interesting because it delved into something I love about the books, which is the parallel between Harry and Neville. One of the most interesting points made in the panel was that while Harry’s mentor is Dumbledore, Neville’s is Harry himself. It’s a connection I never really thought about, but made perfect sense when I looked at Deathly Hallows from the point of view of Neville. Very cool, interesting panel.

By the way, if you’re not familiar with Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and don’t have the time/inclination to pick up a copy of The Hero with a Thousand Faces for a bit of light reading, Wikipedia can help you out.

Clockwork, Goggles, & Dirigibles: Steampunk for Teens: (RS) Much like 60 Books in 60 Minutes (below), this was mostly an overview of upcoming Steampunk novels in YA, as well as a brief but interesting discussion of what, exactly, Steampunk is and isn’t (it is NOT, in case you were confused, merely confined to Victorian times, as I had thought).  In fact, some of these might not even be considered Steampunk by some, but the panelists felt that anyone who likes the genre will love them. A few novels from the panel that I’ll be adding to my reading list:

• Soulless: A Novel of Vampires, Werewolves, and Parasols by Gail Carriger (actually, the only novel that I went ahead and picked up while there)
• The Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
• Airman by Eoin Colfer
• The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross
• The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge
• Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant (our beloved Maria V. Snyder has a story in here)
• Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space by Phillip Reeve
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfield

The Hunger Games:  (RS) Four days of programming and one HG panel? In the small YA Lit room? Epic fail, as evidenced by the mass of people who didn’t get in (including yours truly). Though I expect this will be a wake up call and lead to more discussion panels for the trilogy next year. Stay tuned.

An Hour with Tom Felton:  (RS) Just in case you didn’t know it, Tom Felton is delightful. If you ever have the chance to be in a room with him (and I hope that you do), you should seriously jump on that.*  First of all, he called everyone “love,” which was was both darling and delightfully English. Second, he handled the panel like a pro. In the past, I believe he’d been with Matt Lewis and/or the Phelps twins, but he may have manned it alone in the past few years when I didn’t attend the Con. Either way, he was a champ at smiling at the giggling pre-teens, dancing around the awkward questions (oh, the awkward questions…), and calmly explaining to one girl that he was not, in fact, Draco, but that he could tell how he as an actor felt in a particular scene.

One of the cutest stories was when someone asked if he’d kept anything from the set. After explaining that they weren’t allowed to and had, in fact, had their cars searched every night when leaving the last two films, he told us that he and Dan Radcliffe had planned to tie Dan up and put him in the trunk of Tom’s car for the security guards to find as they searched his car. Sadly, they never got to do this, but everyone was cracking up at the thought of the security guard finding Dan in the trunk and Tom’s casual, “wait, was I not supposed to take that?” The funniest part of the whole panel, however, was when a couple dressed to the tee as Lucius and Narcissa approached the microphone and asked him, in character, what happened between him and “that nice Parkinson girl.” He nearly fell out of his chair laughing, as did the rest of us, then shot back, “Mum! Dad! I told you guys not to show up here!” See? Delightful.

*The chance, not Tom Felton. People tend to frown on randomly tackling adorable British twenty-somethings.

Coming Soon – 60 Books in 60 minutes: (AB) Susan Fichtelber, Diana Tixier Herald and Bonnie Kunzel, 3 excellent Young Adult librarians from around the country gave an awesome presentation on 60 books due to come out in late 2011 and 2012 that scifi and fantasy-loving teens would be excited about. And they got through the whole list! It was very impressive. I have the entire list in my bag, but here are some that sounded particularly exciting to me:

• Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson
• Red Glove by Holly Black
• Wither by Lauren DeStefano
• Queen of the Dead by Stacey Kade
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
• Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede
• Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen

It’s a glorious time for YA and I can’t wait to start reading!

Bye, Bye, Borders

As you’ve probably heard by now, Borders, the second largest bookstore chain in the US, announced that it was liquidating the rest of its assets and going out of business.  This is hardly a surprise to anybody paying the slightest bit of attention to the book industry, but it’s still a sad thing.  After all, nearly 11,000 people, most of whom are blameless, are now out of a job and many communities are now without a physical bookstore of their own.  I know a lot of people will say that’s no big deal now that there are so many places to purchase books online, but there’s something about wandering around the shelves, picking up random books and reading a few sentences, that makes discovering something new so pleasurable.  It’s an experience that can’t be replicated online.  It also means that there are less book buyers out there discovering hidden gems and delivering them to the masses.  It’s not good for the publishing industry, or ultimately the reader, if the number of book-buying outlets keeps shrinking.

It’s not a particularly trendy thing in my line of work to say, but I really enjoyed shopping at Borders.  It had a nice casual vibe and while the staff was and would answer questions (or at least try to), they mostly left you to browse and read to your heart’s content.  I really hate overaggressive salespeople and there can be such a thing as too much customer service.  And they had computers where you could look up stuff on your own.  Why don’t more stores have that?  Probably to force you to talk to overaggressive salespeople.  And they sent out really good coupons every week.

As a vendor though, I pretty much hated them.  They had the craziest accounting system that was clearly designed to avoid paying for anything ever.  They would occasionally buy large quantities of a title, but would inevitably return many of those copies in really crappy condition. And they were constantly returning and demanding credit for stuff that we didn’t even publish.

However as a former employee  my feelings for the company are a lot more mixed.  The guys at corporate seemed to have no idea of how things actually worked at the store level and hired some (though certainly not all) managers and supervisors who had no business being around people, much less managing them.  My stores (yeah, I worked at two different ones.  It’s a little sad.) were also located in pretty well-off neighborhoods which resulted in a great deal of entitled asshole customers.  They were super fun.  But I also met a lot of really cool people, some of whom I still talk to despite the fact that I moved across the country, that made the horrors of retail bearable, even fun sometimes.  I also took advantage of my awesome employee discount quite a bit.

So in honor of  the closing, I thought I’d list some of my favorite, or at least most memorable, Borders memories.

• I kind of set the cafe on fire once.  Let me just say that it was a result of a malfunctioning toaster and therefore NOT MY FAULT.  I took this as a sign that I should never be allowed back in the cafe again, after all I don’t even drink coffee, but no such luck.
• A customer once told me that it was Borders’ new policy that if we didn’t find the customers’ books for them, then they got to kill us!  When I answered “Pardon?” he replied “Yeah, we get to take you out back and shoot you!”  I gave him his book and backed away slowly.
• A woman once asked for a children’s book with a picture of a basket of laundry.  It didn’t have to be about laundry, just had to have that picture somewhere in the book.  And I found one.  We got vague questions (like I’m looking for a book that’s orange) all the time, but I think that this one was the hardest.  And therefore, the most satisfying.
• We were the closest bookstore to the local county jail, and since people weren’t allowed to ship things directly to the inmates, it was my job for a time to send books and magazines to the prisoners.  As you can imagine, it was mostly Playboy and that ilk, but I once memorably sent a Disney Princess paper doll book.  I … don’t want to know what that guy (yes, it was a guy) was going to do with it.
• Creepy Kent would use his employee discount to buy “mature” dvds.  It was gross.  The rest of us avoided him as much as possible.
• We had a Harry Potter Birthday party sometime in that interminable period between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.  We never had people show up for events like this, so we were expecting maybe 5 to 10 kids.  Yeah, we had about 50 kids show up.  While running around like a crazy person trying to gather more supplies, it occurred to me that Harry Potter wasn’t just popular, but a phenomenon.  This was confirmed when we sold out of our 850 copy allotment of Order of the Phoenix two weeks before the book was actually released.
• My friend and coworker Joe thought he was an elf.  The Lord of the Rings kind.  And he wasn’t alone.  Apparently there’s a whole community of people who think they’re elves out there!  And they all wanted to move to a commune in like, Kansas, and be one with nature.  I wonder if he ever made it there.

So what are some of your favorite Borders memories?

Book Signing – A Fan’s Experience

Last night, I went to Barnes & Noble in Buckhead to see Jim Butcher, author of one of my favorite series, The Dresden Files. He was promoting the new book in the series, Ghost Story (Roc Hardcover, 2011) and since I had seen him at Dragon*Con last year (yes, I’m a nerd) and enjoyed the heck out of the experience, I knew I had to get in to this event.

Let me start by saying that I have worked many book signings before. I was a Borders employee back in the day and I have worked some very popular/large events – Nancy Grace came to our store, as well as R.A. Salvatore, and Newt Gingrich. I know how a large well-planned book event can go.

I also know how quickly a poorly-planned book event can go to hell. Lack of books, lack of seats, lack of sight-lines for the author, lack of organization of the signing line. So many opportunities for people to get upset and upset people, especially passionate fans, are not fun people to be around.

So I had my concerns when I called the store at 9:30am to find out details about the signing and the guy who answered the phone already sounded frazzled. Tickets would be given out at 5pm for the 7pm signing. Many, many people had already called to inquire. Yes, he would be signing additional books. Please let me get off the phone, his voice seemed to plead.

For some reason, either because Jim himself is a fairly laid back kind of guy, or because scifi in general gets a low rap, folks seem unprepared for how popular Jim Butcher is. Dragon*Con scheduled him in a half-hour block for signing. When I got in line 2 hours before the signing, I was already too late. There were 50 people ahead of me when they cut off the line (after I’d been standing there for an hour). Jim’s books routinely hit the New York Times bestsellers list and his fans are passionate. And they are many. And willing to drive several hours to come see him.

Needless to say, I had Concerns. I managed to scoot out of work early and got to the store by 5:10pm. I got my signing ticket and I was in the 100-150 block for signing. 10 minutes after tickets had been released. I went back to the area where the speaking area was set up and my heart sank. They used a section between the Teen Paranormal Romance books and Nature Nonfiction, just in front of the kids area. There were maybe 30 chairs, all of which were filled. People were sprawled around any available floor space between different shelves and throughout the store. Now, I really started to get nervous. This had every possibility of folks fighting for view space or pushing to get into the signing line.

I managed to snag a chair when they brought out some extras, and this was when the staff proved their worth. One guy started making announcements regularly, stating the rules for the signing, what was going to happen and when, and pointing out additional staff to answer questions and concerns. Here’s the deal with nerds – if you give us set rules that are fair and you stick with them? We will gladly cooperate. We love rules! They tell us how things work! He and the rest of the staff were friendly and helpful and seemed genuinely excited to be hosting the signing and grateful to us for being there. Awesome.

Jim came out and answered questions for over an hour. He was charming, smart, hilarious and sharp as a tack, as per usual, and when he was done, everyone calmly stayed seated or moved over to the signing line in an orderly fashion. It was fantastic. I got my book signed within an hour and left ecstatic.

So giant kudos to the staff of B&N Buckhead for a great event. Next time, though, try to open up some more space. But overall, it was a great night.