{Event} #StarsAbove Tour | Marissa Meyer Signing at Irving Public Library

Last Saturday, I dragged my husband and 7yo daughter to the Marissa Meyer signing at the Irving Public Library for the #StarsAbove tour to celebrate the author's latest release: a collection of short stories featuring the characters from The Lunar Chronicles. I had to promise them Thai food and other things since this event was over an hour away from us and would likely last a few hours that they couldn't get back. ;0) This is the first real signing my husband has attended with me, and I think it was a side of me he's never seen before, lol.

The Library

I'd never been to a signing at this locale, though they get many great authors, and it was an absolutely lovely location for the event. Mary was such an awesome host to the over 300 attendees and even got the group to sing "Deep in the Heart of Texas" to show Marissa a warm welcome. It was standing room only in the auditorium where the event was held, but it was a great crowd.

The Event - Discussion, Q&A, and Author Reading

While the author discussed the series at large and then how the compilation of short stories came to be, we listened intently, but my husband was distracted by the banner behind Marissa. He remarked later that the story and that backdrop combined would make for an awesome video game. I'm not a gamer myself, but I have to agree.

Marissa took some questions from the audience, but I forgot my notepad so I couldn't take notes. :( Here are a few that I remember, though I'm paraphrasing hardcore:

Q: Which ship does she ship the hardest?

A: Kiko (Iko and Kinney), which she says she's foreshadowed enough that we'll probably be seeing more of them...in the graphic novels :D

Q: Since we're all fangirls/boys for her work, who's someone she's met that she considers a celebrity?

A: Meg Cabot, who she was excited to learn had actually read her work, as well

Q: Does she cry or laugh maniacally when she kills off her darlings?
A: When she's writing the character deaths, they hit her hard. The one in Scarlet brought her to tears. But when she's reading reader reactions to these deaths, she grins evilly.

Marissa doesn't like to read from her own novels at signings, so she told us the story of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson. (She is not a fan, btw.) My daughter was very surprised by this story, as thus far, she's only known the version Disney tells. Guess it's time to school her.

The Signing - W/ Bonus Mobile Planetarium

I wasn't able to get my signing ticket in advance, so I was #257, which meant a long very long wait to meet Marissa. Luckily, there were cupcakes and lemonade and Mary hosted a little adventure in the mobile planetarium they had in the library, special for the event. I'm a little claustrophobic and the crush of 300+ people was already getting to me, so I didn't check this out, but my hubby and kiddo did, and she was utterly captivated when she came back. They sang songs, got to see the constellations as they related to Harry Potter, and she learned that the Big Dipper isn't really the Big Dipper...it's apparently part of Ursa Major. Who knew? (I mean, I should have...I used to love astronomy and had a telescope in my room when I was a kid, but that was ages ago. :P)

The signing line took about two hours, but we were seated for most of that, until my number was called, so it wasn't too bad of a wait. Except for the complaints from my family that they were hungry. ;( Anyway, we got up there and I may have had the largest stack I'd seen of anyone at the event. This was my first time meeting Marissa, though she's been to my area before, so I had to have her sign all of my HCs, plus my ARCs, plus my audiobook and the drawing Katie did for Judging a Book By Its Cover so long ago. It was a lot, but Marissa was so generous with her time. She recognized that I was a blogger and so we chatted about the community a bit and about instilling a love of reading in young people.

A nice chat all around and an awesome event. Thanks to Mary, the Irving Public Library, Marissa Meyer, and Fierce Reads for putting this tour together! And thanks to my family for suffering through it with me! It means the world to me!

I can't wait for Heartless!!!!!