I Met Maggie! Toronto Tour Stop #1

I  had the chance to meet one of my favorite authors on Saturday...Maggie Stiefvater!!!! ***squee*** She is on tour right now for Forever, the conclusion to her Wolves of Mercury Falls trilogy. I have always been fascinated with wolves and one of the things I love about this series is the way she has kept that animal instinct in them while they shape shift into a wolf. Here's some pictures from the signing I was at.

A few fun facts I learned about Forever:

• One cover of Forever had what looked like maple leaves ,but since the story doesn't take place in Canada Maggie had them change it. She also mentioned that Sam would not wear skinny jeans...she didn't have enough say to change it LOL
• Forever was handed two weeks prior to her deadline, then she had second thoughts & scrapped it :o  She felt the first copy was written more with what the readers would want and not really how SHE saw the story...it just didn't feel right.
• One of the major scenes in Forever involves a wolf's struggle in the forest (sorry for being vague here, trying hard to avoid spoilers) and this is actually based on a real wolves plight. One website she used as part of her wolf  research actually tracked the wolves and logged how they died. She thought it was such an awful way to die...then figured it would be good to use!

See that big stack of books on the table, yep all mine...I brought every single book I had, plus an extra Forever for a contest coming up soon!

And I couldn't resist, feel sorta stalkerish but I HAD to see this car of her's up close!

Thanks Maggie for making the trek up to Canada and both Scholastic Canada and Chapters for making it happen :D

Maggie Stiefvater takes on Ontario!

To celebrate the release of Forever, New York Times bestselling YA literature sensation Maggie Stiefvater is coming to Ontario this weekend, as part of her North American book signing tour!

Driving a ’73 Camaro, she will make the following stops:

Saturday, July 16th, 12:00pm
CHAPTERS OSHAWA CENTRE
OSHAWA, ON
For more information call: (905) 438-8593

Saturday, July 16th, 6:00pm
INDIGO YORKDALE
TORONTO, ON
For more information call: (416) 781-6660

Sunday, July 17th, 2:00pm
CHAPTERS SOUTH LONDON
LONDON, ON
For more information call: (519) 685-1008

There will be trivia, giveaways, DJs and more!


See more information about her tour here:
http://maggiestiefvater.blogspot.com/

and here:
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/storeevents/
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Maggie is an author I have always wanted to meet. When I found out she was coming to town, I did a little happy dance and have been counting the days ever since. I'll be at the Oshawa stop with my bestie Jackie.
Are you coming?

The Dystopian Tour 2011

For the past few months I had been counting the days to this event. On Tuesday night, I had a chance to meet two NY Times Best Selling authors. This was my BEA replacement...one day I will make it there! Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall was a top pick in 2010 and I was enamoured by the first book of her love dystopian trilogy, Delirium, released earlier this year. I had just finished Veronica Roth's adrenaline pumping Divergent. I enjoyed seeing Roth's main character, Tris, step outside her comfort zone and really giving it all she had!

The event began with a Q&A from Ajay Fry, the host of InnerSPACE and which was also being filmed, to air on last night's episode at 11 PM. Here's a little bit of what went down:

Lauren talked about being influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's idea that all great books are about love or death. She mixed that thought with the swine flu epidemic we were dealing with at the time, because when you really look at love you will see that it has a lot of symptoms in common with diseases. (I loved seeing these included in the book because it really is freaky to look at it this way. ) For Veronica, it all started with a vision of someone launching themselves off a roof and her wondering what would make a person do that. She was studying psychology at the time, in particular, the concept of using stimuli to remove fear and from there she thought that courage would bind the people together, then the rest of the story emerged.

"You can't drive a story forward without characters", according to Lauren Oliver. Characters are the key to making the story work. From a readers perspective, I found it interesting when Lauren admitted to writing not only for readers, but in helping her in a journey to get someplace. I had never really thought of it that way before. Veronica actually began writing Divergent from a male perspective, but it just didn't fit, so when she found Tris' voice, she knew she had it right.

And what do Lauren & Veronica think of ebooks? Both don't see it as a threat. As long as stories are being told, the medium doesn't matter. Veronica is like me and still wants to hold the books, so as long as we are still around, hard copies will be too. I wonder if Lauren was onto something when she mentioned ebooks becoming the norm and hard copies being available as special editions? Only time will tell.

Thanks so much to HarperCollins, Indigo, Lauren & Veronica for a fabulous night. For those of you in and around the Toronto area, tonight is the last stop for the tour. Head on over to Chapters Brampton at 7PM!


You'll have to trust me on this, from L-R is my bestie & fellow book blogger Jackie from My Ever Expanding Library, Lauren Oliver, Veronica Roth and moi! A special thanks goes to Jordan for being the photographer for the evening!

The Dystopian Tour hits Toronto This Week

I've been counting the days, to this and tomorrow can't come soon enough! This week Torontonians have not one but three opportunities to experience the Dystopian Tour 2011. I am planning on heading to Yorkdale right after work with my bestie & fellow book blogger Jackie from My Ever Expanding Library.


Anyone else as excited as me for this? Are you planning on hitting up one of these stops? Hope to see you there!
Mel

Meg Cabot in Toronto Next Week!

I was excited to find out that Meg has a stop in Toronto promoting her newest novel, Abandon. As a lover of mythology, I am eager to spend this weekend devouring this modern tale of Hades & Persephone.

I hope to see you there!

Mel

About the book:

New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a dark, fantastical story about this world . . . and the underworld.

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.

Cory Doctorow in Toronto tomorrow!

Sadly, I can't make this event but thought since there is so much buzz about Cory & his new book For The Win that I'd pass this along. The book loooks amazing, don't you think?!

In the virtual future, you've got to organize to survive.

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual gold, jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy,
running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where ountless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay. Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.”

In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

Clear up your calander next Wednesday.....

Who's all going? I'll be there along with my bestie, Jackie.