Heartbeat Weekly (92): YA Signing Recap

 

Books I got this week

 
 
 

From the signing:

All of these are signed!

• Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake
• Antigoddess by Kendare Blake
• Replica by Lauren Oliver
• Requiem by Lauren Oliver
• Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver
• In a Handful of Dust by Mindy McGinnis
• The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
• Like a River Glorious by Rae Carson (reserved from the week before)
• “My Replica made me do it” t-shirt (won)
• Signed swag

Bought:

• HBP magnets: Loki, Hedwig, Gryffindor, Snow
• Expecto Patronum bookmark from CreateExploreRead
• Bookish buttons from CreateExploreRead

Won:

• Night Court and Butterbeer candles from Burning Pages

I won these awesome candles on Instagram from Ella (@fictionandfae)! Thanks again Ella!!! <3

From the publisher:

• The Amateurs by Sara Shepard press package: includes ARC, nail polish highlighter, mascara jump drive, lipstick light

Thank you so much Big Honcho Media, this was such a cool package! I especially love the mascara designed as a USB drive. It’s so cute!!

• Black Widow: Red Vengeance by Margaret Stohl
• Black Widow pin & bag

Thank you so much Marvel Press!

From the Page rep package:

From the Page candles

• Full-sized candles: Nevermore, Floo Powder
• Sampler tins: Drink of Wizards, Reading Nook, Peeta’s Cakes
• Chapstick: Hagrid’s Pumpkin Patch

This was my first rep package from Callie and I love it SO much!! Nevermore is definitely my favorite, but they all smell amazing. Use my code NOVEL10 to get 10% off her shop!

October Fangirl Monthly:

This month’s theme was Sailor Moon!

• Postcard print (Mayumi Matsumoto)
• Brooch pocket watch necklace
• Cutie Moon Rod necklace
• Crescent moon & star ring
• Sailor Jupiter’s rose stud earrings
• Usagi pouch

I was SUPER excited about this box…it’s the ONLY anime/manga sub box I’ve ever seen, and I absolutely adore Sailor Moon! The main piece, the pocket watch, was the selling point for me on this box. I was really hoping for the star one, but I like this one too! I love everything in this box and the presentation was fabulous! Subscribe HERE.

Pre-order campaign:

• The Diabolic magnet, sticker, keychain, eraser, postcard, temporary tattoos, & signed bookplate

For review:

• RoseBlood by A.G. Howard (NetGalley)
• Hunted by Meagan Spooner (Edelweiss)
• Rise of Fire by Sophie Jordan (Edelweiss)
• The Wish Granter by C.J. Redwine (Edelweiss)

SO MANY PRETTIES ON EW FROM HARPER. It was hard not to go on a downloading spree!

From the library:

• The Reader by Traci Chee
• Bad Girls Don’t Die by Katie Alender
• Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Weekly Recap

Posts on the blog:

• [3 Oct] The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh ★★★★
• [4 Oct] [Horror October] Top Ten Tuesday: Villains
• [6 Oct] Black Widow Prize Pack Giveaway!
• [7 Oct] Through the Dark by Alexandra Bracken ★★★★½
• [8 Oct] Horror October: The Show That is Slowly Growing on Me
• [9 Oct] Heartbeat Weekly (92): YA Signing Recap

Horror October week 1 recap

Read: Solitary by Alexander Gordon Smith

Watched: The Shallows, Episode 1 of American Horror Story: Hotel

On the blog:

• [Horror October] Top Ten Tuesday: Villains 
• Horror October: The Show That is Slowly Growing on Me

How is everyone doing so far?! I had hoped to read at least 2 horror books this week, but I haven’t spent much time reading sadly. I’m about 30 pages into The Hallowed ones and it’s a little slow but the helicopter scene was INTENSE, so I’m intrigued!

Author event recap

Thursday I drove out to Columbus for Mindy McGinnis, Lauren Oliver, and Kendare Blake! This was only my second time going to this particular bookstore. It’s a cute little store, though! It just sucks because it’s in downtown Columbus in OSU territory. I forgot how much I detested OSU traffic! I left super early and made it down early despite HORRIBLE rush hour/college traffic (like seriously I think actually prefer Cincinnati). I got there at 5:15, and since I had some time to spare and was starving, I googled nearby restaurants. I found an Arby’s that was only 2 miles away and thought to myself, Ohhh I can totally run down there real quick and grab food and come right back! HA. HAHAHA. Yeah it took me 30 freakin’ minutes to get food and come back. I live in a small town where that trip would have taken me less than 10 minutes, so I always forget how much traffic blows in big cities. Oh well, I still got there early!

The panel was AWESOME! The three of them had great chemistry and lots of sarcasm, so it made for a super fun discussion full of dicks and slutty badgers other inappropriate things haha! This was one of the funnest panels I’ve ever attended. Those ladies had me laughing out loud! A few key points:

• Mindy used to be a teacher and spent a lot of time erasing drawings of dicks from textbooks. Which made her get to thinking about the whole “boys will be boys” thing, leading to The Female of the Species and all of its feminine rage.
• The main idea for TFotS came to Mindy when she was younger and watching a crime show about a man who had raped a girl in a small town where everyone knew everyone. Everybody knew he did it, but didn’t have solid evidence, so he went free. She got to thinking to herself, What if someone took justice into their own hands? And thus TFotS was born.
• Mindy also told the story of how she was at a fair (I think that’s where it was anyway) and someone had drawn a whole bunch of dicks on a dusty van. People were walking by – some parents covered childrens’ eyes, some people ignored it, some looked on in disgust – but all acted like those dicks had a right to be there. Like it was normal. So Mindy took matters into her own hands. She used the top shirt she was wearing to erase them all, and when she got to the back she saw that there was a stick figure family on the back with three daughters. Yes. Let that sink in. And that’s what led to Alex’s character!
• All of that talk led to the girls starting a hilarious poem about “dick erasure”
• Kendare’s Patronus is a field mouse and she is very bitter about it
• Lauren joked that her Patronus would be a honey badger. She once dressed as a “slutty honey badger” (her words, not mine!) and someone recognized her and she was embarrassed
• Lauren’s inspiration for Replica came from the question of why one life matters more than another. For example: Kids working in sweat shops. She took the idea of animal testing and made it into human testing. She also knew she wanted to do that format!
• Kendare’s inspiration for Three Dark Crowns came from a “bee ball.” She saw a nest of bees somewhere, and a beekeeper was telling her about the Queen, and how the workers protect the queen. About how the Queen lays eggs and leaves them to kill each other to determine who the next Queen will be. She knew she wanted to do a matriarchal story, too…thus Three Dark Crowns was born!
• Kendare created Anna Dressed in Blood because she loves Stephen King and wanted something bloody and gory. She also said she really wanted to play Silent Hill and couldn’t for whatever reason so she wrote something similar instead.

I’m sure there are tons of other things I’ve left out. I wish I had recorded it! When they opened the floor for the audience to ask questions, they were offering shirts to the first three people who asked a question. You know I jumped on that!! And the shirt is SO SOFT AND COMFY OMG. (Sadly I’m a chunker so it’s a tad small. TIME TO LOSE WEIGHT *laughs and cries at the same time*) My question was: How many tries did it take you to get published? Lauren said it took her 3 times, Mindy 5, and Kendare said she tried with a whole bunch of short stories before finally getting something to go through, and then had no problem with her books.

Adventures on Bookstagram

 
 

Bookstagram news

Most exciting news first: I was chosen to be a rep for 3 companies this past couple of weeks! The first was SkinnyHues, the second From the Page, and the third was OwlCrate. I’m very thrilled to be part of each team, but I am super duper excited about OwlCrate! I almost dropped dead when I got the message from Korrina because it is a dream come true to rep for them! They’re my favorite sub box! I feel SO incredibly honored to rep for these three lovely ladies!

 

Other news: I’m hosting a challenge this month with Bridget (Dark Faerie Tales/@darkfaerietales_), Christy (Novel Ink/@cbookaddiction), and Eden (@eden.hammond)! My 20k giveaway is also still going strong. It ends on Halloween :)

 

What’s in your mailbox, loverlies? Link me up!

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