Book People, Austin's indie bookstore, held an event this evening for Marissa Meyer's SCARLET tour. for those of you who may not know, Meyer is the author of The Lunar Chronicles, which is her reworking/revamping a set of four classic fairytales. The first in the series is CINDER, a cyborg, futuristic retelling of Cinderella. The newest installment is centered on a reworked Little Red Riding Hood, and it's called SCARLET.(Sidenote: Amazing cover art, no? Some of my favorites, if I'm honest, and I'm hoping the publisher doesn't decide to change them mid-series. I'd be super bummed.)
What I really love about this series is that, really, Meyer has just kept to the bones of the original material, so Cinder's stepmother is evil, and Scarlet's grandmother is missing, but she generally deviates from the rest of the story. Basically, she leaves enough there to allow the reader to make some educated assumptions about the characters, and those assumptions generally play out as you'd expect them to.
And yes, there is a big, bad Wolf in Scarlet. And he's about 100 kinds of delicious, but that is probably beside the point.
Book People is really one of my favorite places in town, so I was really excited to head down there this evening, and they definitely did not disappoint. There were a good number of chairs set up, and they had the cutest snack set up, which really surprised me. Every author event I've ever been to was just Q&A and the author reading a bit of their book. Here's a pic that I posted on Instagram from the event:
Anyway, Marissa is super adorable. She shared her story - how she started writing, how she began writing CINDER, in particular, and what the inspiration for her writing at all was. It turns out that she started writing Sailor Moon fan fiction, which is probably the best thing I've heard in a long time.
She read two pieces of her novel, and then told a few classic fairytales - Cinderella and Red Riding Hood, of course - in their original formats - no Disney here! Then, she opened the floor up for questions, and there were some really great ones (and one real clunker, but that's besides the point). I asked what we could expect from her - will she be writing more fairytale retellings, or is she interested in expanding into other genres? As it turns out, she's got ideas for two other series, a paranormal thriller and a contemporary one (both YA), and she's just sold a stand alone novel, but it's so new that she couldn't release any real details about it, aside from saying it's a fantasy sort of story.
I really enjoyed the discussion this evening, and Marissa is an inspiration for a writer like me - in listening to the story of her beginnings, I feel we have a lot of similarities, which was a really cool thing to realize. Normally, I'd have purchased a book and had it signed by her, but initially, I didn't think I'd be able to attend this event, so I ordered a signed copy from my favorite book store in Nashville, and it's on the way, via mail to me. (Regardless, though, I've already read an ARC of SCARLET, and it's pretty damn fabulous.)
This was a great event, and I hope Book People has more like it, and soon...
And now begins the incomprehensible wait for book 3, CRESS.
No comments:
Post a Comment