San Francisco Meetup with MWT

[drashizu.livejournal.com]

Hey Sounisians! I went to San Francisco to the meetup in Yerba Buena Gardens yesterday and, of course, took notes! And there are pictures! And... potentially very great news? I'll post them behind a cut.



We met at 2 o'clock under a tree on the west side of the garden and had a group of 11 people. Four were fans who follow Megan on Tumblr, two were from Sounis (hwaet and myself), and four were librarians who had attended ALA. There was a performance happening in the park at the same time (Circus Bella) which sounded very fun, although we could only hear the music.

After introductions, we got down to the all-important questions! As usual, "Not Telling" made an appearance, but we also covered some really interesting topics:

• Megan talked about how her trip to Greece had inspired the series, and how she wanted to use a setting that was unlike Middle Earth but immediately recognizable


• The moment where Gen's identity is revealed to his traveling companions was the idea that inspired the rest of The Thief


• She picked The Thief to write for her first novel because she had only ever written short stories before and didn't want to try something too hard, and she knew she could write The Thief (since it was short and included lots of myths)


• Megan also mentioned (incomprehensibly???) that The Thief is not her absolute favorite book of all time (???) and she picked it in part because she didn't love the story so much that it would hurt if she ended up ruining it by writing it down - unlike some other (?) ideas (?!!) she has for novels (?!?!?!?) that she hasn't written yet (!!!!!! !! !)


• One of the librarians said that she thought of the Queen's Thief series as "political fantasy" and MWT said she preferred "historical fantasy" because she liked to keep the stories grounded in history. Also, she used to be referred to as the Tom Clancy of kid lit but now she's the George R.R. Martin of kid lit, which freaks some parents out! But everyone in the group agreed it was accurate


• Someone asked what her favorite book or series is, and she said that the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones was inspirational to her because DWJ was incredibly good at writing about immortal characters, and MWT wanted her gods to seem as real and concrete as DWJ's - also she talked about how the gun that appears suddenly in the middle of the Dalemark Quartet is a major defiance of genre conventions toward keeping the tech level of a fantasy novel pre-gunpowder, and I'm not sure she said this directly but it seems safe to assume that this is also partly the inspiration for The Thief's only revealing guns to the reader 3/4 of the way through


• Speaking of technology, we got onto the topic of Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive and how much easier fantasy protagonists would have it if they could just look up the answers to their problems on the Internet!


• Megan reiterated tht there are 2 more books planned in the series, but the sixth book keeps trying to turn into #6 and #7, and she has to keep squishing it back together - I don't know how to feel about that but it's probably great for us either way (either book 6 is going to be long or it's going to be 2 books, and I don't know about you guys, but both of those sound awesome to me!)


• BIG NEWS SOUNISIANS: Book #5 is currently in its "resting state" before she takes another look at it to revise it. HOWEVER, she was very firm that she doesn't want anyone to take this as a promise that the book will be out soon. Because it takes her a while to write each book, she plans to wait to release book #5 until #6 is sufficiently far along. She doesn't want everyone to have to wait another 6 years between the last two books in the series


• However, she did confirm that she is currently writing book #6, and that she takes a picture of her coffee and posts it on Tumblr as a way to keep track of writing days - so every time you see a coffee picture on her Tumblr, it means that was a writing day!


• When asked which of her own books was her favorite to write, MWT took several seconds to ponder and then said that The Thief was the easiest to write: it only took 8 weeks over the summer to write the first draft, and she had the manuscript sent in to her editor by Christmas


• There was a conversation about how they make and bind hardcover books but I was trying to put my notes in order and forgot to write any of it down (sorry Sounis!)


• Q: "Are you glad you escaped the ball gown cover trend?" (when the bookbinding discussion turned into a cover art discussion) A: Megan talked about how the original cover of her first book, the short story collection, looks like someone terrified of an ice cream cone (I do like the flying carpet cover better) and she didn't like it but couldn't say anything. Someone present had a copy of the original Thief cover where Hephestia looks like Jesus (Megan's words, not mine, folks) and she told an interesting story about how librarians had trouble getting kids to read The Thief because, what with Jesus being on the cover and the fact that kids vaguely remembered a thief on the hill behind the crucifixion, they assumed it was a religious book and wanted nothing to do with it! Fortunately several covers since then have been much better... although another fan remarked that the newest cover with Gen's hands on it somewhat resembles the cover of Twilight and Megan said "Oh, great"


• Also, I was unaware that Sounis traditionally referred to that cover as "the magic yo-yo cover" but now I have been informed ;)


• And Megan also told a story (which I believe has been recounted to Sounis in the past?) about how once when she was at the LA Times book fair with Rick Yancey and Jonathan Stroud, the tent for book signing wasn't quite big enough for three authors, so she was given her own tent right next to it and the line for the other tent was super long and hers had only 7 people in it. So, since the event coordinators were hurrying people through the lines so fast and limiting people to only 1 book per signing, the 7 people in her line just went through the line over and over again getting each of their books signed one after another - smart thinking!

After that she signed books and we took pictures!

This is the tree we sat under (to set the scene):


These are the sock earrings that Hwaet made for Megan! Aren't they spectacular? I wish I could knit.


And this is the whole group!


It was incredibly fun! I'm glad I got to go, and I hope everyone who wished they could be there but couldn't is at least satisfied with the news about the next two books. I know I am!

Comments

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this fun, detailed writeup! I wish I could have been there but I'm so glad there was a good turnout.

[canonisrelative.livejournal.com]

I just moved away from SF earlier this month and now I am wishing like crazy if delayed my moving date!!! Thanks so much for the recap, sounds like an amazing day <3

[beth-shulman.livejournal.com]

This sounds fabulous! And *some* update on book five is so much better than no update at all, so thank you for that!

[elvenjaneite.livejournal.com]

Yes! Just what I was thinking.

[imbecamiel.livejournal.com]

Fun to see a writeup of the event - thanks for this! I really wish I could've made it there myself. :)

[qwentoozla]

Great writeup! Thank you for sharing!

[magicsandwiches.livejournal.com]

Awesome post! Thank you for taking the time to write this; it means a lot to us! I'm so happy for everyone there!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you so much for telling us about the event. It's nice to hear concrete info about what's going on. I love Megan, I desperately wish that I had been able to make it.

[freenarnian.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you for sharing this with us! I so enjoyed the update and the pictures. Especially those adorable sock earrings! SO funny! I love them.

Can't wait for the day when book 5 explodes here on Sounis. :)

[badtzphoto.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the details and the great photos.

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

Aw, that looks like a ton of fun, thanks for the write up and the photos! And those sock earrings are ADORABLE.

[maidenbeckah.livejournal.com]

Sounds like y'all had lots of fun! Thank you so much for the write-up! The sock earrings are AWESOME.

[sunsethill.livejournal.com]

I, too, appreciate the write-up. It's nice to know that Book 5 is coming along well. I imagine it must end up with a horrible cliffy if she doesn't want six years between Books 5 and 6, and that sounds good to me, also. I guess this means I can do my reread of the books and then not have to wait too horribly long for the next one.

[tiegirl.livejournal.com]

Great recap! (I suck at them, so I am in awe)
The earrings are great, and adorable, and the pictures are awesome! It's nice to see Sounisians! I wish I had been able to meet up with TLE in Washington D.C., and anyone else who could have come, but I ended up in Florida unexpectedly so even that tiny meet-up didn't happen. :(
So glad you and everyone had fun! Isn't our author awesome?

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

So happy you all could be there! Thanks for writing it up, and so quickly, too, drashizu. Sounds like a lovely meetup and those knitted sock earrings are just the best thing ever.

now she's the George R.R. Martin of kid lit

Ha! Except I believe he's taken only FIVE years between books. OTOH, the man is 66 years old, so I see the concern his fandom has. Luckily for us, Megan is a mere child in comparison. :-)

Book Covers, holding things

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

Just came across this again: http://100scopenotes.com/2009/12/18/cover-controversy-holding-stuff/

Re: Book Covers, holding things

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Haha, that is great. :-) It only really resembles Twilight in the fact that they both have hands holding things, it doesn't look at all like its the same genre.

[agh-4.livejournal.com]

Ohhhh..... This is AMAZING. Thank you for the write-up, Drashizu, and the lovely, thorough collection of news and stories, although my heart is aching so much that I don't check Sounis anywhere approaching enough anymore. I was AT the ALA conference... D:

But really though. It's so interesting to hear new things about her writing process and mind-bogglingly cool to know about the existence of those other ideas...

[manderelee.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for all the notes!! It's great to hear about your time with MWT!