I feel like it’s common knowledge that my love for Pride and Prejudice and zombies [as separate entities] is vast. Imagine my delight when Seth Grahame-Smith combined them in the book so cleverly titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I read it in one sitting and when Barnes & Noble came out with the special edition [“with 30% more zombies!!”], I was all over it.
So. When I saw that Seth was going to be doing a signing to promote his new book Unholy Night, I was prepared to rearrange my entire schedule to attend. I kept watching the event page to see if it was going to change into a wristband event. Alas, it did not.
On the night of the event, we got there around 6pm. I was expecting a lot of people, so I left Hubs at Starbucks and headed upstairs. And since I was the first person to show up, I quickly claimed our seats.
Shane, the events director, remembered me [I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not…] and said hi. He went on to tell me that he didn’t think he had any teen events planned. We briefly talked about the event and how I was expecting a crowd. He reminded me that it was still early. That just cemented my resolve to not join Hubs in Starbucks.
Seth came out around 7:15. He stated right off the bat that he didn’t like to come out to and “preach”, but liked to have some interaction with the audience. He did a reading from Unholy Night and then gave a brief monologue about his writing and how it all came about.
He talked about how he got the idea for Unholy Night [sitting in the parking lot of a Blockbuster Video and his friends alluded there’s definitely more to this story], his upcoming movies to be released this year [Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter] and tried to comment on upcoming works in progress [Beetlejuice and P+P+Z].
When it appeared that we were going to be done within 30 minutes of starting, Seth said that we had to give him 2 more questions before he’d start signing.
I asked what made him think of putting zombies in Pride and Prejudice. He said that it was his editor’s idea. That they were looking at pairing something from the classics [because the original authors are dead, so their works are public domain and royalties don’t have to be paid] with a genre specific thing. They had a list of both and after looking at Charlotte Brontë and Shakespeare, the idea of P+P with zombies just clicked.
After answering a few more questions, he said he’d start signing.
We had 4 books to get signed, so I gave my husband 2 and I took 2. We went up to the table together and my husband said he wanted to ask the last question, that he was going to ask Seth’s favorite color. Seth said it was black. I said that the last question should have been if we were really going to go streaking in the promenade [Seth had posted on Twitter that it was happening after the signing]. He started laughing and said that it should.
We thanked him for coming out and he thanked us for showing up. When I mentioned that we drove from San Diego, he asked if we were going to CC, I said yes and that we’d be at FOB as well. Seth said he hoped to have some fun things happening at both.
Seth Grahame-Smith might be a big time Hollywood guy now, but he’s certainly a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see what sort of stuff he comes up with next.
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