I was in Utah for a few days last week, visiting friends and family in my old stomping grounds. It’s always nice to see my bros and hos in the Beehive State.
On Monday, a couple of fun things happened. I had a few minutes before I was supposed to be somewhere, so I stopped at the Barnes & Noble in Orem to browse. There was an exceptionally large crowd of people milling around, many of them youngsters, so I wondered if I’d happened upon a field trip of some kind. Then I saw that an autograph-signing was in progress, featuring Brandon Mull, author of the “Fablehaven” books.
Brandon and I are both BYU alumni, and we’ve occasionally crossed paths over the years. He was part of Divine Comedy, the sketch troupe that was inspired by my Garrens Comedy Troupe, and now of course we’re both writers. Except he writes fiction, and he has fabulously well-attended book-signings.
He was nice enough to send me a copy of the first “Fablehaven” last year, and I raved about it briefly in my blog at the time. I knew the second book, “Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star,” had been released, and I realized as I was saying hello to Brandon here at Barnes & Noble that I hadn’t seen it yet. When I told him that, he said, “Oh, didn’t they send you a copy?” I told him indeed “they” had not, but that I would eagerly await it if they were going to. Hooray for connections to people who offer free copies of their novels!
I congratulated him on his success and turned to go, whereupon I nearly knocked over a display for “New Moon,” the sequel to “Twilight,” written by Stephenie Meyer, who I happen to know is a devoted EricDSnider.com visitor. “Twilight” is a teen-romance-vampire story, and a very good one at that, and now I realized I had TWO sequels-to-books-written-by-people-I-sort-of-know that I needed to read. Stephenie wasn’t on hand to offer me a free copy, though, so I’ll have to make other arrangements. I must put a cap on the mooching off my novelist acquaintances lest they start writing unflattering mooch characters based on me. (Possible fictional name: Eric D. Schnorrer.)
The second fun thing that happened Monday night should probably be a separate entry, and so it shall be.
