Author Spotlight: Leigh Bardugo signing event!

Have you ever been to an author signing event? I know that unfortunately authors can’t make it to every city, and can’t make it to every country. One of my wishes if I had infinite money would be to send authors to places they don’t usually get to go! Anyway, I live about halfway between Philadelphia and New York City, so I’m lucky enough to have access to many author events.

This past Tuesday (January 29th) I was able to attend the Leigh Bardugo’s launch event for King of Scars! This is the first book of her duology about Nikolai, a character originally from her Grisha trilogy. Since a lot of people can’t go to these author events, I thought I’d talk a bit about about what it was like, share what she talked about, and just talk about the whole day in general!

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The Journey + Dinner!

My roommate joined me for the event (she’s probably reading this, hi Brianna!). We live about an hour’s train ride from New York City so we left pretty early so we could go into the city and get dinner before the event. Brianna is learning French using Duolingo since she’s traveling there this summer so I learned some French with her on the train. When we got to the city, we went to dinner at Max Brenner Chocolate Bar & Restaurant. They had some amaaaaazingly delicious hot chocolate ❤️. They also had these special “hug mugs” that you’re supposed to hold with two hands haha.

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The Location!

The event was held in the Rare Book Room at the Strand Book Store. I posted a few weeks ago about my favorite bookstores snd the Strand was one of them. It is a huuuuuge bookstore with three floors and an amazing selection of both new and used books. There was a fan meet-up event in the store an hour before the Q&A and signing, but we didn’t really go to many of the stations they put on because Brianna had never been to the Strand before so we just browsed around the store. The actual Q&A and signing was as I said in the Rare Book Room which is up on the third/top floor. They even had balloons for the event! They were the letters ‘K’, ‘O’, and ‘S’ for King of Scars. One of them (the ‘S’) popped before Leigh came out 😂 so they took down the ‘O’ as well and just ended up leaving only the ‘K’.

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The Q&A!

The format of the event was basically 30ish minutes of Q&A, and then signing. She used to do a longer conversation with a moderator at past events, but decided to shorten it to just Q&A and signing in order to have more time for interaction with readers! Here are some of the things she talked about!

Things about the Grishaverse:

• Obviously people asked about the tv show! so:
• She was asked what her dream cast was and said that was the one thing that Netflix told her she couldn’t say, because they don’t want whoever does end up being cast to feel like they’re not good enough
• There won’t be any white/straight/thin-washing!
• She acknowledged that she dropped the ball while writing the Grisha trilogy, and it was very white, so they are aiming to make the characters in the trilogy more diverse in the show
• Book info:
• There is a very good chance for a third Six of Crows book!!!!! (I’m DEAD I NEED IT) But first she has to write the second Nikolai book and the rest of the Ninth House series, so it will be a few years
• Someone asked which Six of Crows character she relates to the most and she said that there is some of all of them in her. She feels like Nina is her on her best days when she’s feeling good, a lot of Wylan’s insecurities are hers as well, and then of course Kaz in terms of chronic pain/illness and using a mobility device.
• Nikolai was originally supposed to die in Siege and Storm! But then she met/started writing him and was like “Okayyy, you can stay.”

Things about Ninth House (her new adult fantasy novel):

• Ninth House is about murder, dark magic, secret societies at Yale University
• Alex, the protagonist, is through and through Slytherin
• Someone asked if there will be dirty scenes 😂and she said “not in the way you’re thinking”
• She doesn’t really like writing dirty scenes, and prefers the lead up
• So there will be a slow burn romance!!!! (I’m HERE for it)
• But also, who knows there mayyy be dirty scenes in the next book

Things about writing:

• She was asked how to write from different points of view (POVs), and she said that in her first draft often the POVs sound very alike, but during revisions/edits she’s able to their voice – so it’s not all done in the first draft!
• A piece of writing advice she gave was that if you feel like you’re trying to force your characters to do something, maybe take a step back and reevaluate your plot because if you feel like you’re forcing it, it may not be the best direction for you to go in
• For tv that she watches while writing a particular book, she needs to watch something that is totally unrelated to her books. For example while writing Six of Crows she watched a lot of Parks and Rec

Miscellaneous things:

• Someone asked what her latest reads were, and she said she read The Queen of Nothing! Which is the last book in the Cruel Prince trilogy by Holly Black! Idk even how haha since the second book juuuust came out. But she said it was evvvverything
• She also recommends the Brooklyn Brujas series by Zoraida Córdova as something we all should read (the first book is Labyrinth Lost)

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The Meeting!

The Strand does a decent job of organizing the signing portion, which is pretty important for popular authors. They give you a group number when you come into the room and each group is about 10-15 people, and then they call each group to line up in order of group number. That way you don’t have to be standing in a line the whole time, and can sit in the seats while you wait for your group number.

Leigh was also SUPER nice on Twitter talking about the signing portion. She said that if you are nervous, have anxiety, etc you don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to! You can just go up and smile. Basically she just wanted everyone to feel comfortable, which I really appreciate.

So lots of waiting happens and then!! I got to meet!! Leigh Bardugo!!!!!!! She is SO KIND and funny and really just the best. I mean I already knew that just from following her on IG and Twitter, and hearing the Q&A but when you speak to her one-on-one she is just AH. A QUEEN. We talked a little about universities since the one I’m at is very similar to Yale (where she went and also the setting of Ninth House). I told her that I’m in an astrophysics PhD program and she was like “WhAAATTTT! Girl look at you kicking ass!” Just thinking back to our whole interaction makes me happy. She signed three of my books (there was a limit) and then I got to take this photo with her!

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The End!

I hope you enjoyed coming with me (well, virtually) to the event! What do you think of her Q&A? Are you excited for Ninth House or the Grishaverse show? Which other authors should I try and go see?