Authors that are cooler than LKH

[colimbina.livejournal.com]

This might be slightly OT (if it is, just say so and I'll delete it.)

I work at a bookstore. Today, who showed up but... Jim Butcher! It's one of the bigger bookstores so we get a lot of scheduled signings, but this wasn't one of them. He was just in the neighbourhood and thought he'd show up and sign some stuff. It was awesome! He was <i>so</i> nice, and seemed really flattered to get all the attention. Compared to LKH, who constantly bitches on her blog whenever she does a signing.

I <i>nearly</i> asked him if the rumour I heard was true, that he got his start because he read the later LKH books and decided that he could do a better job, but I chickened out at the last second.

Does anyone else have any cool author experiences? I've heard that LKH is actually fairly friendly in person (I assume that's if you don't criticize anything about her.)

Comments

[pith]

he got his start because he read the later LKH books and decided that he could do a better job

The way I'd heard it was that he was part of the fanclub/mailing list/whatever and Laurell recommended him to her then-agent (or vice versa), because as far as I know, Storm Front (AKA, Dresden #1) came out around 2000, which means it was probably written in 1999 at the latest, and I can't remember how badly the books were sucking at that point....

[contrariwise.livejournal.com]

Yeah, just quoting from his site (http://www.jim-butcher.com/jim/), he tells it like this:

I decided to take the advice of a friend -- go out and track down the specific people I wanted to do business with. I decided who it needed to be based on a fairly simple premise. Laurell Hamilton was writing material a lot like mine. Ricia Mainhardt had liked Laurell's stuff enough to represent her. Maybe she would like my material too.

So I applied to Ricia's agency and got rejected.

Not to be deterred, I found out which convention she was going to be at, and went there with a fistful of questions from the LKH mailing list, using them to strike up a conversation with Laurell and Ricia. Laurell was really nice to me for no darned reason at all and asked me along when everyone went out for lunch. I met some other writers, a couple of editors and another agent over lunch. By the end of the day, Ricia had offered to represent my work, and another agent (Jennifer Jackson, in fact) had asked to take a look at some of my other work.

I got to have this conversation with Jennifer Jackson (my current agent after parting ways with Ricia) that day at the convention: Hey, why are you interested now? You just rejected me like two months ago?

"Well yeah," says Jennifer. "But that was before I met you."

[freyalorelei.livejournal.com]

I met Melissa Good (published alt fic writer and eventual scriptwriter for Xena) at the 2005 Xena con. She's extremely tall and very sweet, and when I told her that I ordered a copy of her book Hurricane Watch directly from the publisher but it never came, she requested that we exchange information, and she sent me a signed copy several months later! Just a darling woman, is Missy.

[winter-sidhe.livejournal.com]

i haven't had an experience like that, but i have 3rd degree burns from the BURNING JEALOUSY you have wrought.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Well, I got to meet Terry Pratchett at a regular signing. :D It was pretty cool; he did a fun speech and answered people's questions and then signed books.


...Something about your HTML is borked. I mean, the italic tags look fine, but I can see them, not their effect. Maybe it's because you're using the font tag? O_o

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

OMG. I know he was out at StonyBrook last weekend, and I will just DIE if he was somewhere around there that I might have been, and missed him. (Purchased his latest book today.)

-Dira-

Jim Butcher

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

Jim Butcher was at ICON a SciFi convention at Stonybrook in March. I know because I got to sit next to him-he was signing at a table next to mine-literally for hours. He was the nicest man, and was willing to get into long conversations with anyone who came by.

Re: Jim Butcher

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

I know. *Sniffles* I couldn't quite get myself together enough to make it, it IS a bit of a drive, then clobbered my foot on top of it, and said...nah.

Figures he'd be a complete sweety.

Re: Jim Butcher

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

Sorry. For the record though, he was completely exhausted.

Hope your foot is doing better

Re: Jim Butcher

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Awws. Poor dear. I hope he can get some rest soon, and not just because he probably needs it to keep writing. :).

Yup. Foot's fine, though as soon as it recovered, I managed to burn my hand, making driving a no for a couple of days. Just not my couple of weeks. lol. (Hand's doing much better now, tho, too.)

-Dira-

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

Lucky you. My local bookstore is small (and we're still a pohick town, but growing) to get anyone famous. I normally pop in when someone is doing a signing to be polite (even if I don't like the book, I buy one).

[jerel.livejournal.com]

The nicest author I've ever met is Peter David. You know those people who bring like 50 zillion things for a writer to sign, and you're standing behind them thinking "dude, the guy's a writer--he needs those hands!" Peter will sign all of them, and do so cheerfully. He's also very knowledgable about canon literature; I had quite a nice conversation with him about Victorian writers.

I think maybe the reason a lot of fans like him (as well as his writing) is because he's a fan himself. He "gets" us because he is us.

[crevette.livejournal.com]

I have actually been looking for a copy of his first book since I've caught The Dresden Files on SciFi. How cool that he's a nice guy too!

[wereleopard.livejournal.com]

You will be SO pleased with the books... the show does not even come close to doing them justice.

[crevette.livejournal.com]

I'm still flummoxed about something GOOD coming out of association with LKH. It's unnatural.

[wereleopard.livejournal.com]

I freaking hate you. Where do you work so I can come and work there too?

I ADORE Harry Dresden.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

*jellus*

About the biggest name author I've met was Sara Douglass. I ditched my chem class and hauled along a heap of her books and even stole a poster from the book store for her to sign and wound up chatting with her for about half an hour (the line was very small) and she was a lovely person to talk to. I know I've met Gillian Rubenstein a couple of times, and Tony Shillito was nice to talk to -- there was some Young Adult Writers' thing that used to go on (I don't know if it still does) and I harrassed people for autographs on my notebooks (yet another reason why I won't be throwing them out).

I would simply love to meet Terry Pratchett in the Melbourne con, but I have to like, save monies for that. And then take either one of my friends or all her stuff for him to sign because she's one of the biggest Pratchett fans I've ever met. And if Jim Butcher ever comes to Australia, I am SO stalking him like Reznor.

[sadisticsidhe.livejournal.com]

I met Kathy Reiches, I don't know if any of you have read her Temperence Brennan novels but she came to speak at my school and I met her afterwards. Nice but you could see that she was really tired and trying hard to be polite. I admired her for that because my school is out of the way and she was so friendly, answering questions about her work (both literature and Anthropologically.) I wish I could have met her when she wasn't so tired.

[bluesimplicity.livejournal.com]

My friend recently made a comment to me about how as we get older our "rock stars" change. I used to be a HUGE Duran Duran fan (shut up with the sniggering) but these days it's all about the authors, and I've been fortunate enough to meet most of my favs. (It's one of the advantages of living in NYC - Alot of authors see it as a MUST DO place on their signing tours.)

I met Neil Gaiman quite a while back when he was promoting Neverwhere at a small, local bookstore. He was an ABSOLUTE love. He did a reading, answered questions and took time to speak to all of the fans personally. I asked him if I could kiss him (mind you, I was much younger then), and he let me give him a peck on the check. It was one of the happpiest days of my life.

I met Terry Pratchett when he was on tour promoting Monstrous Regiment. He was also very cool. Did a Q&A session and then signed everything everyone asked him too. For some reason, my hair fascinated him and he asked if he could touch my head for research he was doing on a character. (I was doing the very severe, pulled back hair with ALOT of gel in it at the time and he asked me all sorts of questions about it.) He was FABULOUS. And I mean, come on - How cool is it to say "Terry Pratchett actually TOUCHED my head!"

I met Patrick McDonnell at ComicCon here in NYC in 2006. Again - an absolute love. Drew pictures, answered questions, and even set up a separate signing areas for those of us who had attended his session so we could get our books signed. I will love him forever.

Tanith Lee, who is one of my all time favourites, I have never met. But I once sent a letter to her publishers, who forwarded the letter on to her. Within two weeks, I had a lovely response letter, all the way from England, thanking me for being a fan and letting me know what she was working on. I remember being completely amazed by her kindness and and the time to took to answer a letter from a single fan across the ocean. I keep the letter in my keepsake box of precious things.

I even met LKH once, back before A Kiss of Shadows came out. At that time, she was perfectly fine - friendly, seemingly amazed that so many of us were there for her to sign things, and totally cool. Little did I know...

Anyway, that's a bit of my history with authors. They are SO TOTALLY my rock stars these days.

[salustra.livejournal.com]

I used to work staff at sci-fi literary conventions in my town so I got to meet a lot of authors.

Here's some of my faves-

Anne McCaffrey- very nice, incredibly funny in person. She took the six senior members of our concom out to dinner, and proceeded to tell the waiter that they were all her children by six different husbands. She rode to a local book signing on the back of someone's motorcycle.

Marion Zimmer Bradley (bless her soul)- So glad I had a chance to meet her before she died. Very intelligent, personally shy, but she had the most amazing repertoire of stories from the early days of fandom.

Steven Barnes- Wow. He spent hours talking with me and my partner. Also very intelligent, and just a wonderful outgoing warm person. I had only read the books he co-wrote with Niven before I met him, I went out and bought everything else he'd ever written after that. He impressed me *that* much.

[queenbetsy.livejournal.com]

I've seen the huge lines for LKH signings and she's always been really pleasant to her fans. And believe me, she gets some freaks. It gets awkward when she calls a halt in the middle of the proceedings to ice her arm. You're sort of standing there, clutching a book, shifting from one foot to another, while she sits there with her arm encased in ice cubes.

MaryJanice Davidson is awesome. Really tall (6'0"), blonde, foul mouthed, and hilarious. She encourages readers to skip buying her hardcover (at signings!) and instead get it for free from the library, then adds, "That noise you just heard? Was my editor's head blowing up." She's always good for a few laughs. Never met anyone who took herself less seriously. I was scared to even talk to her until she teased me into submission.

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

I went to an Anne Rice book signing once about ten years ago, actually to meet someone else, as I really didn't give a crap about Rice.

You had to BUY the latest hardcover copy of her book THERE to get it signed. She would not sign anything else.

-Dira-

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

No book authors, but I did have a nice experence with Comic Writer Devin Grayson, she was in town for a small comic convention (this was several years ago). My friend and I got to talking at her table when lunch time came around instead of taking the con food we jokingly invited her to have lunch with us at a local resturant.

Shock of shocks she agreed. o_o

And myself and my friend got to be all comic geeky with her for the next hour in an Applebee's, that was so cool.

[hellgirldeity.livejournal.com]

I've only met LKH once. I asked her in a Q & A, how much forethought and planning she had put into OB, especially the wolf pack. She just blinked at me a little and said, "Not much at all." This was back in 2003 if anyone's wondering.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

*delurks*

My favorite Terry Pratchett story is the one where he was booked to do a signing at a shop, and the shop decided to forbid any fans from getting their old stuff signed -- they could only attend the signing if they purchased something from the shop that day, to be signed. Terry basically said "screw that" and set up a desk outside the shop and signed everything. (This could very well be utterly apocryphal, but I got it from a source I trusted.)

I met him once at a Forbidden Planet, around 1998, and gushed like a moron that I'd written a paper in college on "Small Gods." He did not laugh in my face. Just said, "I hope you got a good mark." For this I adore him and his squeaky voice, and have to share the story even if it is embarassing. (Plus he signed all my stuff, with different messages in each.)

Met Neil Gaiman about a year and a half later at a Virgin Megastore. Also lovely. Signed my copy of "Good Omens" right under Pratchett's signature. About seven hours into the signing, he was still signing everything people brought, recognizing people, and making polite small talk.

Julian Barnes is a bit quirky, but that's off topic I think. ^__^

Cool author encounters

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I have several. I used to work at a sci-fi/ crime specialist bookshop in Glasgow, and occasionally you would have authors drop in. I think the most famous was Colin Dexter, who was really nice. I made him a cup of tea :) There was also a man who wrote some Conan the Barbarian series books, who had a Swedish name. He was very tall, distinguished, and well spoken. Immaculately dressed, and with perfect manners too :D

Cool #1
Kim Newman. He flirted with me!

Cool #2
Terry Pratchett. He invited me to sit at his table in a convention bar, with the very witty line of "Any woman who wears her underwear on the outside is welcome here!"

Cool #3
I was DJing in a goth club in Stoke on Trent a week or so ago, and one of the people who got up to dance was Storm Constantine. I made Storm Constantine dance. I am thinking of putting this on my CV.

Cool #4
Stephen Baxter, who thanked me for recognising him :o

Cool #5
Tanya Huff, who was delightful, gracious, and patient with a group of half a dozen people whilst everyone else was pestering Kristine Katherine Rusch!

Cool #6
Freda Warrington, who was completely overwhelmed at a signing over how many people had read her books. She's lovely :)

Cool #7
Clive Leatherdale, who geeked out over the historical Dracula with me for an hour once :D

There's loads more, because I used to go to SF conventions (Albacon a couple of times, Worldcon in Glasgow, etc) and I'm a sad book geek who goes to lots of signings! Unfortunately, I now live in the cultural desert which is the North-East of England, and nobody decent visits here :/