Eve's Fan Garden

On Friday, Feb 26th, I was very fortunate to be able to attend the author appearance for Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, authors of Beautiful Creatures at Copperfield’s Books in Santa Rosa, CA.

They began the appearance by signing books. Next, they had a lovely young lady who runs a teen fansite introduce them! She was super cute! After they introduced the basic premise of the book, the began to interview each other! It was so amusing! From there they answered audience questions before they were whisked away to catch the last flight home.

This is such a unique book in that two authors met and wrote a book together! When we went to the book signings we learned just how that came about.

Kami and Margaret met when Margaret’s kids were in Kami’s 3rd grade class! Their friendship developed over the years as all of Margaret’s kids went through Kami’s class!

One day Margaret came home from having lunch with Kami and Margaret announced to her daughter that she and Kami decided to write a book together. Her daughter responded with 4 words “You never finish anything” which was interpreted by Margaret as the ultimate “double dog dare”!

According to them, the book was just a fun thing they were doing and they never set out to be published writers! Well, look where they are now! They said it took exactly 12 weeks to write the book. (Hmmm.. did that happen to be your summer break Kami! LOL!) And 9 months to publish. They were very happy to win the bet with their kids!

They started out by mapping out their new “world” and their new creatures. They wanted it to be their own original world so they would not have to follow the traditional mythical creatures and the traditional storylines that go with said creatures. All their creatures are defined within the story. Their story is set in the south and is considered a “Southern Gothic” novel.

It was really neat to listen to them talk about character development! The said that while they wrote, they shared their story on a daily basis with their 6 teen readers (5 girls and one boy). Margaret explained how the story kind of took on a life of its own and she was surprised how one character who they thought might have been a minor character turned out to be a major character based on the response from their teen reading team!

At the book signing they were asked about their characters and whether or not they become real to them. They explained how while they were writing the characters became so very real to them and they felt completely immersed into this fantasy world they created. They hoped we, the readers, would feel the same way! They said we are “Excited to welcome you to our delusion!”

The character names come from their own family genealogy and from names that might be found in the south. Even though the story is written from the male lead character’s perspective, they did not have any trouble writing it. Kami said they both have several brothers from which they are very familiar with boy behavior!

Once their world was mapped out, they said they wrote the book in chapters. They would each write a chapter then trade. They would go through each other’s chapter using their “jedi editing” skills and then trade the chapter back again. This went on four times at which point, anything that was still there was considered to be good enough to keep! LOL!

Towards the end of our evening with the authors, someone asked them “what are three things you cannot live without?” and each was given the opportunity to answer.

Kami went first and since she was not allowed to include her family or diet coke as one of the three her three favorite things were Black Sabbath, Gigantic Ice Cream sandwiches from 7-11 and Yvette. Margaret went next and listed Yvette as well, To Kill a Mockingbird, and headphones!

Some other news we learned from that evening –

**Beautiful Creatures has been optioned as a movie! *YAY*
**The sequel (which they could not talk about) is scheduled for release in the fall. *double YAY*
**And they are very excited that their book has been published in 31 countries and was nominated for the ALA award!

We are so very pleased to have Beautiful Creatures as one of our featured books for March! I am doubly blessed to have had the opportunity to sit down before the appearance with these two authors, the very definition of Beautiful Creatures, to share many, many laughs!

Here are some photos from the book signing!

Copperfield’s Books – Author Appearance