Last night, Sword Mistress, Captain Awesome, Princess Consuela, and I braved the wretchedness of I-85 north at rush hour to see the fabulous Lauren Willig at Georgia Gwinnett College. If you aren’t familiar with her work, Willig writes an addictive series of novels about spies in Regency England and France, all named after flowers. “Intrigue. Espionage. Romance. Swordplay. Comedy.” is how her website describes her work, which sums them up nicely.
I can’t remember which Rampant lady first discovered these books (i think it was Princess Consuela), but we’ve all become addicted – some of us more than others – so when we heard she’d be heading to Georgia for a visit, we marked our calendars accordingly.
Willig was promoting her latest book, the 9th in the Pink Carnation series, and we were lucky enough to be the first stop on her tour. The Garden of Intrigue comes out today (happy book birthday!), but happily her publisher agreed to let copies be sold last night, so we all got our greedy paws on one.
Willig was adorable – she obviously enjoys the hell out of writing these books and gets a kick out of the scrapes and love entanglements she gets her characters into. She read two passages from the new book, both of which had us giggling. She then answered questions about her writing process, what’s her plan for characters from past books, and the headache of choosing titles and covers for her novels. She answered every question with a smile and seemed excited to share the inside scoop on the inner life of her characters.
Her true sweetness and affection for her fans came through when she signed. Not only did the four of us approach her in a pack and proceeded to linger and chat all together with her as she signed each of our books, but Princess and Captain had brought their entire collections of her books. This didn’t phase her in the least and she happily signed them all and didn’t freak out at our loud and extremely chatty selves.
A cool bonus awaited us at the signing table. Willig’s first book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, when it was re-released had a bunch of illustrations, graphic-novel style. The illustrator is a Georgia lady, so she was there with the illustrations! They looked amazing, the illustrations managing to be both beautiful and capturing the humor and playfulness of Wiilig’s book.
Thank you, Lauren Willig for coming and thanks to the Gwinnett Library system and Georgia Gwinnett College’s library for hosting a great event!
Rampant Reads 
February 16th, 2012 at 8:14 pm
Thanks so much for coming to the event! It was such fun meeting you all– loud and extremely chatty are always a plus.
I do love the idea of a Pink graphic novel– but that’s not in the works right now. The comic scenes are just a few discrete scenes that we did to celebrate the reissue of Pink I last year. You can find them all on my site: http://www.laurenwillig.com/diversions/comics/index.html
Gorgeous, no?
Thanks for keeping me entertained at the signing and for the fabulous write-up!
February 16th, 2012 at 9:58 pm
We had a blast! Come back to Atlanta soon 🙂
February 16th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
We had so much fun! I’m going to need you to come back again for the next book. And since I got everything but the one book that is loaned out signed last night, I will not be the girl with the giant stack of books holding up the signing line. (But I did flap them to speed the process along!) Come back soon!
February 17th, 2012 at 11:14 am
Thank YOU for signing my mountain of books! I can’t wait to dive into the new book this weekend.
February 16th, 2012 at 8:34 pm
I’m so sad I missed her!!!! Staff meetings are no fun especially when rescheduled to coincide with her book signing 😦
February 27th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
[…] good Selwick family drama as well as a classic boyfriend vs. career dilemma for Eloise. At the book signing that we attended two weeks ago, Willig revealed that she’s ending the series with the […]