Fairest & Marissa Meyer Signing!

Marissa Meyer finally came to the Atlanta area for a book tour, and somehow the universe (and my awful luck) actually allowed me to go. The event was held at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, one of my all time favorite bookstores.  If you live in the area or plan on visited then you have to go there, it’s so awesome and the staff is excellent. ANYWAY! The place was packed! So I was standing in towards the back of the room, but it all worked out since I could see directly over everyone sitting down (and since I’m short I didn’t block anyone’s view I don’t think)

Marissa told us about abit about Fairest to start with. So here are a few tidbits I learned.

• Fairest originally started out as a short story idea for a promotion Macmillan was putting together, and the word count restriction was 5,000 words. Needless to say she ended up tabling Fairest, and she put out a different short story instead.
• Fairest takes place about 17 years before Cinder.

After she talked about Fairest she read an excerpt…from…WINTER! And it makes me want November to be here so badly! Then she went to the Q&A, which there were a ton of fantastic questions.

• The first characters Marissa came up with were Queen Levana and Wolfe, all the others came in at later points.
• Puss in Boots was originally going to be a fairy-tale included in the storyline but she scrapped it when it became obvious it wasn’t going to fit in correctly.
• Iko is pronounced ee-ko!
• The story of Cinder came to her in a dream, where Cinderella was leaving the ball at midnight and instead of her shoe falling off, her entire foot did.
• She doesn’t really have a set writing routine, but she does work on her current project about 4 to 6 hours a day.
• It took her 2 years to write Cinder, which includes several drafts, revisions, edits, and beta readers. Once she started querying publishers it only took 3 months to get a contract, and a year before she was published.
• One of her favorite relationships to write was Scarlet and her grandmother, because she really loved their time together even though those sections didn’t take up much of the book.
• The movie rights to the Lunar Chronicles has been sold, and word is that a script has been written. They are just trying to find a director. So keep those fingers crossed!
• One of the most excited things for her about a possible movie deal is that she might also get character action figures.
• Winter will be around 800 pages long!
• She is currently working on an Alice in Wonderland themed book!

And then signing began! Marissa is super sweet, just like she is on Twitter, and even though the line was absolutely gigantic she took time to talk with everyone and get pictures if they wanted.

The inscriptions read:

• Once Upon a Future – Cinder
• Hack Away – Cress
• Mirror, Mirror – Fairest

I already had a signed copy of Scarlet at my house, but that inscription reads “Who’s afraid?” The swag includes a bookmark, Iko Approved sticker, and a Fairest mirror.

I’m am so thrilled that I have entire set of the series all signed, and some new swag to add to my collection. It’s even better that I finally got to meet one of my favorite authors.