I love authors way more than traditional celebrities. Meeting Tom Cruise wouldn’t really faze me but meeting my favorite author would make me go into complete fangirl mode. However, I had never had a chance to meet any authors at all before this summer.

In July some book friends of mine informed me that New York Times best selling author Khaled Hosseini of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns was coming to Ohio to promote his new book And the Mountains Echoed. I was ecstatic! This is an author whose books really moved me and I admired. The signing was huge, with a couple of hundred people coming out to meet him. Khaled did a Q&A talk where I found him humorous and really engaging. Also way cuter than I expected! Due to the size of the event there was no picture taking, but I did get my book signed and got to shake his hand.

My next author meeting was totally different. Tessa Dare and Gayle Callen were coming to Dayton.They both write romance novels – Tessa wrote The Spindle Cove series that I had really enjoyed and Gayle I had yet to read. This was at a bookstore in Dayton where there was a small crowd. This was much more interactive and I really loved seeing them talk to us so candidly. I thought they both were really funny and I thought it was awesome that Tessa recognized a friend of mine from their Twitter interactions. I’ve since read Gayle’s latest release that I had signed and loved it. I left there a bigger fan than I was going in.

I then was able to go to a small bookstore in Delaware, OH and meet Patrick Rothfuss who has a huge fan following. The Name of the Wind is a fantasy novel a fellow muse convinced me to read, which I completely loved. This small bookstore was packed and Patrick was amazing. He was hilarious, answered many, many questions in philosophical and funny ways and he stayed way late. Patrick was willing to take pictures with every single person and signed multiple books for just about every fan there.

So my experiences so far have been vastly different. But the common thread they all shared were that the authors were SO great. Since in general authors are like idols to me maybe I assumed they would think they were better than their fans, or thought they’d act snobby. If anything, my meeting these authors made me love them even more. If you can manage it I would highly recommend going to one!!

~Clio

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