Charlaine Harris Book Signing

So this past Thursday, Christen and I took a drive up to Jacksonville for Charlaine Harris' book signing for her release of Deadlocked. Neither of us had been back to Jacksonville since Christen's graduation in 2010. So before heading to the beach, we stopped by Riverside for an early dinner at The Casbah. Anyone who goes to Jacksonville must go to The Casbah.



After a delicious meal, we headed across town to the beach. The Bookmark was a small bookstore one block from the beach that we didn't know existed until this week. We arrived an hour early, right before the big rush of people, and got pretty good seats. There were so many people in attendance, not all could fit inside the small bookstore so there were speakers set up outside.



Charlaine Harris answered questions from the crowd for a half an hour. I was very happy that there weren't a lot of spoilers because I have only read through book seven. There were a couple spoilery questions that she would not answer, but overall it was a very interesting Q&A. She even answered some questions about her other series and hinted at future projects after she finishes Sookie's story with book thirteen. The best thing I learned: the Harper Connolly series has been picked up by SyFy.



Even though we were in a very early group to get our books signs (since we pre-ordered), we stuck around until the end so that we could get all of our books signed (We have all but eight, nine, and ten, plus, Christen brought the collection of short stories and an anthology). Charlaine Harris' personal policy is that she will sign two books at a time, but you can wait in line again (and again and again) if you have more. She broke policy and signed four for me at the end because there were only three others left in line.



I tend to be very shy, so I probably came across star-struck when it was my turn to meet Charlaine. I thanked her for writing the series because Dead Until Dark was the first Urban Fantasy novel I ever picked up after venturing away from the YA section for the first time (and as you can see from my blog, that's kind of a big deal). This was the first book signing that Christen was excited for (and not just dragged to by me), so I made sure to get a picture of her with Charlaine.