I love Michael Grant. I love his books and I think he’s hilarious and thoughtful in person. I had the great pleasure of speaking on a panel with him last year in NYC and have been hoping that we’d be able to cross paths again. So you can imagine how excited I am that he’ll be in town doing a few school visits and then signing at my local indie!
Here are the details:
When: Monday, October 12 at 4:00 PM
Where: Park Road Books
What: He’s touring for his new MG series The Magnificent 12 which has been getting some truly excellent reviews. But I hear rumor he’ll also be signing his other books as well!
One of the questions we got asked while on the panel in NYC was about the limits of what we can and can’t write about as authors (or rather, what limitations we feel put on us by editors, publishing houses, readers, etc). Michael discussed the interesting intersection between writing violence and the words authors can use to describe that violence and how often that creates a situation where something violent happens and the character’s response is “oh darn” rather than an expletive. His answer has always stuck with me because I think there’s a similar intersection between writing about violence and sexual situations — how much more leeway I feel writers have in writing violent situations than they do writing about sexual situations.
If you’re interested, you can actually watch the panel here. It was a post-apocalyptic teen panel featuring Michael Grant, Scott Westerfeld, James Dasher and me.
Hope to see some of y’all on Monday at the signing!
Hey, thanks for the publicity boost Carrie.
My usual book store turnout is about 6 people. I'm on book tour at the moment doing schools during the day — which is fun — and bookstores at night, which I thin of as ritual humiliation.
The same day I got the news that I'd made the NYT list (and thus could have the phrase "New York Times Bestselling author" tattooed on my giant bald head) I did a store event with 2 people: a girl and her aunt who, the clerk helpfully pointed out, came to every author event.
And this, kids, is why the wise author insists on staying at hotels that have mini-bars.
The night after the 2 person turn-out? I hit the big zero. Naturally I had to beat that, but I was mystified as to how I could. I decided I'd have to have an event where someone came in and actually returned a book. Then I would be able to trump any other author's sad story.
Unfortunately the next night I had a big crowd. Screwed everything up.
I do hope you get a chance to come by.
I got to see Michael! LOVED MEETING HIM! (there was like 8 at ours) I like small groups because we get to chat with the author more.
wish I could be there. Sounds awesome!