Marissa Meyer Signing Recap + Giveaway

So, living in Mississippi, we don't get a whole lot of authors coming to the area. Needless to say I was more than pumped to see Marissa Meyer was coming to Lemuria in Jackson, MS this past Thursday. Like a terrible college student, I skipped my last two classes of the day to get there in time. I had important things to do!

The signing was outside on a small patio by their event building. Marissa signed our books first and then answered questions. The biggest thing I gleaned from this bit was the nerdiness of her family, something I loved. It's so nice to see inheriting a nerdiness can help you out in life. :) She told us about her inspiration for The Lunar Chronicles: Sailor Moon fan fiction. Her very original inspiration for a future set fairy tale came when she entered a Sailor Moon fan fiction contest with a story about Puss in Boots. Sadly--though good for us--she came in second out of two entries.

Everybody at the signing. (There were multiple cameras, we looked all over. ) :)

The nerdiness continued when she told us how she wrote the first drafts of Cinder, Scarlet, and a third of Cress as a result of NaNoWriMo and her uncle's love of Star Trek. In 2008 there was a contest in Seattle in conjunction with NaNoWriMo that said whichever Seattle-based writer wrote the most words in the month would win a walk-on role in Star Trek. Marissa wrote just over 150,000 words for the contest. Funnily enough, like the Sailor Moon contest, she lost by a little over 1,000 words.

She went on to talk about some of her favorite books--Pride & Prejudice, Kristin Cashore's Graceling series, Harry Potter, Divergent, Daughter of Smoke & Bone, The Book Thief, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, and Shadow & Bone--and how much hope she got from successful young adult series when she was writing and now.

She talked about a lot more, but that would make for a very longg post :) But before I go, if you get the chance to see Marissa in person, GO! I had the best time; she was hilarious, entertaining, and such fun. And even if you can't go see her definitely pick up Cinder and Scarlet ASAP. They're AMAZING.

Now for a giveaway! Currently, I'm especially out of money so I couldn't get a book to give away, BUT I got some extra fun swag for two lucky winners! Each winner will get a signed bookmark and a button. One will get two tattoos and the other will get some Scarlet lip gloss! It's watermelon and quite tasty. :) It'll be open for entries for two weeks and winners can be from anywhere in the world, so get to entering!

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