She who feasts on tears of readers!

So, I don't usually do these kinds of posts on this blog but I think it's pretty relevant to my "never trust a duck" tag. Because today I met Cassandra Clare.

These things don't usually happen to me. I mean, I get lucky with meeting semi-famous people all the time, but I don't go to book signings because there are zero cool bookstores around my area who like to host events with YA authors. So I've pretty much resigned myself to preordering signed copies of books if I want them signed.

But. About a week and a half ago, I learned that Cassie Clare was having an event with Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan in Rhinebeck, New York. I looked up how far Rhinebeck is from where I live, and learned that it was less than two hours. And then I freaked out. I immediately texted my friend Kaitlin (who you might remember from my hypothetical-Shadowhunter-lives post) and asked if she'd want to go with me. We had to work out travel arrangements, which involved me casually saying to my mom, "So, would you be interested in going to that book signing?" and my sister insisting that she HAD to come because I talk about "THIS WOMAN all the time" and it ruins her life. [To be clear: I do not talk about Cassie all the time. I talk about her characters all the time.] Anyway, and then there was this whole debacle about me having to work today, but that was resolved when my manager accidentally gave me the day off, then asked me if I could work, and I told her I had plans.

So, I got up at 5:40am. My sister and I are housesitting for our aunt, so after getting ready we had to meet our mom at home, and then we had to drop my sister's car off at our dad's to get her brakes fixed. Anyway, we officially left around 7:40. In the morning.

The bookstore had emailed all of the attendees saying that tickets for the signing line would be first-come-first-serve, starting when they opened at 10am, so being a regular concert-goer, I figured we had to be there early. We got there around 9:15, and there was nobody there. At all. We waited in the car, and then Kaitlin met up with us, and someone else showed up too and went to the door. So we got out and waited a while, and then they let us in and we got signing line tickets. Two different groups between the four of us, but whatever. Having gone to the Tour de Nerdfighting for TFiOS, we were used to the signing line groups and didn't really care.

After that, we had to find something to do until seating started at 3. We walked around Rhinebeck. A lot. Turns out, Rhinebeck is a really old town with some really neat old buildings, but it is also a really boring town. We didn't want to lose our parking spot so we tried to find things to do within walking distance, and it was not easy-- we went to a farmer's market and got cider donuts, walked around, went back to the bookstore, I FOUND FOUR SIGNED COPIES OF AWESOME BOOKS, walked around some more, went to lunch, and it was still barely 12:30. Pretty much the whole area we had to walk around consisted of two sidewalks that went maybe half a mile before ending or turning into a residential area, intersecting in the middle. Not to mention it was 93 degrees out and many of the places we went into didn't have air conditioning. So we got ice cream! And walked more! I'm using exclamation points because I'm trying to make Rhinebeck sound more exciting!

We went back to the bookstore a little before 2:00 and sat down, but they said they'd be kicking everyone out at 2:45 to line up outside, so we just went out and started the line ourselves so that we could be in the front. We were in the second row for the event and while we may not have had to get up as early as we did to be there, I was glad we weren't in the back.

Anyway, Holly, Cassie and Sarah came out at 4 and each read something from their upcoming books. Holly read the first chapter (?) of her totally new book (it hasn't even been seen by her editor yet) The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Cassie read the prologue of Clockwork Princess (!!!!!! Will and Jem's first meeting, from Charlotte's perspective slafhds;fknl), and Sarah read/acted-out a chapter from Unspoken, which I'm pretty sure I preordered a while ago and I'm excited to read it. Can I just say, Sarah Rees Brennan is an extremely amusing person? Like, she was the only one there whose books I haven't read yet, but I'm glad she was there in all her cardigan-unbuttoning, Taylor Swift fangirling, sometimes-Irish-accented glory.

After that they took audience questions and it was extremely amusing. Being me, I could not help but analyze every single thing Cassie said that related to the Infernal Devices, and I also could not help but notice that whenever she was talking about the love triangle or just Will and Jem, she always said Will's name first or talked about Will and Tessa's relationship first. Also his name is the first word of the prologue, which means it's the first word of the book (side note: he is also the first character mentioned in the whole series). Huzzah! That's got to mean something, right?! *wishful thinking*

They also gave away many prizes to people who asked questions, and I suffered the curse of the introvert yet again: if you don't speak up, you get nothing. Including a clockwork angel. 

So after the Q&A they started the signing with Group 1. My sister and my mom were in that group, so my sister took my Clockwork Angel to have signed, and then she met me in the signing line to show me that Cassie wrote on the wrong page and printed her name instead of doing her signature ahaha. Oh well. Then I had Holly sign Black Hearts, Cassie Clockwork Prince, and Sarah The Demon's Lexicon. We stood at the signing table for a while because the people before us were talking to Sarah, so Cassie asked me if I'm a Will girl or a Jem girl, and naturally I said "Will." She told me that nobody at the signing had said Jem yet, and I said, "Well I like them both!" Then she was like, "Well sure, you don't want Jem to die, right?" And then she and Holly started talking about crazy things that could happen, including Will murdering Jem. Kaitlin was like, "You have no idea how often we talk about this!" She didn't mean the whole murder scenario, but I'm not sure Cassie and Holly realized that, considering their faces when she said it:

God, I'm laughing so hard right now. When we got to Sarah, Kaitlin had to talk to her about Revenge, and she proceeded to ask me if I watch it and I said no, so she wrote in my book, "For Paige-- Watch Revenge! --Sarah Rees Brennan"

So yeah. It was good times. I went with the intention of getting 4 books signed, and left Rhinebeck with EIGHT autographed copies of some of my favorite books (and Pandemonium). I think that is the definition of SCORE.

Also I would like to comment on how quick-witted Cassie Clare is. Like, the words that come out of her mouth are words that would never even pop into my head. I'm not sure I can explain it... but let me just say it makes sense that she is a writer. And that her characters are so awesome.