When the Girls Gone Sci-Fi tour was announced, I was so excited to see that there was going to be a San Diego date. Of course we were going to attend.
Michelle and I got to the store early and bought books before heading to the bakery for delicious pastries. Added bonus: getting odd looks by people walking by when we sat up our IG photo shoot.
We hung out around the store for a while, chatting it up. The authors came in around 6:45. They thought the signing started at 7, so they were looking for a bit of a pre-show. Claudia came out and chatted about her Star Wars book. She couldn’t really talk about it, so a fangirl conversation about Star Wars as started…which somehow transitioned to a conversation about poop.
It was then opened up to an odd Q&A about random things.
What’s your favorite holiday?
M: It used to be Christmas, but I’m getting older, so I’ll say Thanksgiving.
JK: I don’t like that because I always get stuck doing dishes.
C: Yeah. I like that. We had 45 people over last year. When you have that many people, doing dishes is easy.
JB: Yhanksgiving.
Favorite Netflix binge watch?
JB: Friends
M: I watched Supernatural S1-9 in two months. I wasn’t writing. I had some down time waiting for edits.
C: I watched two and a half seasons of Scandal. Lately I’ve been watching Star Trek: Next Generation because I have a German exchange student with me and he’s never seen it.
JK: My husband and I made a pact that we wouldn’t watch the new season of House of Cards until I came back from tour. I’ve been checking the recently watched page every day.
Favorite author?
C: The only one I almost died over was Suzanne Collins. {There was a story about Australia, a bookstore without any copies of Mockingjay and then finding a copy on a high shelf and climbing up something rickety}
JK: For fantasy, Robin Hobb. {There was more to this}
M: My favorite book is Jane Eyre and that’s easy because she’s dead. Alive, I’ve got too many. It’s like picking a child.
JB: The two that are on my auto buy: Sophie Kinsella and Rainbow Rowell.
If you could be any animal, what would it be?
JK: An orca, but not at Sea World.
JB: I would not be a turtle, but only because I just found out that if she saw me in the middle of the road on my shell, she would just swerve around me. I think I would be a dog in my own home. They’re so spoiled. There have been times that we’ve been watching a movie while sitting on the floor because they’re on the couch and we don’t want to disturb them.
M: I would want to be a dolphin, but I would like to be at the top of the food chain.
C: A well loved house pet is what you get when your karma is good.
Favorite book cover?
JB: Brodi Ashton’s Everneath
M: The original cover for Across the Universe
JK: These Broken Stars and This Shattered World. I like covers with stars on them.
C: {I didn’t get her answer}
Favorite book to media adaptation?
JB: The Devil wears Prada
M: Lord of the Rings
C: The Hunger Games books. I think they did a great job. The people who have only seen the movies were concerned about how nothing was happening.
JK: Princess Bride. It’s the perfect tone and perfect cast.
C: Clueless for Emma.
The event started right at 7:30 and Maryelizabeth introduced everyone.
JB: I put this group together because we’re all female authors who write sci-fi, but also to celebrate the community of YA. We’re all from separate publishing houses.
We’re going to do something different, we’re each going to introduce each other and share some fun facts. I’ll be introducing Melissa. Melissa graduated from Munich and still swears in German. Her celebrity crush is Harrison Ford and she’s never been to california.
M: When Jessica Khoury signed the deal for her first book, she paid off her $115 library fine. In 3rd grade she spent 2 weeks in detention for biting another kid. And yes, she simply walked into Mordor.
JK: Claudia started writing fanfiction at 11 and hasn’t stopped. Her hometown was so small, her graduating class had 28 people. She can’t tell the Kardashians apart and hopes that will always true.
C: Jessica is really squeamish about belly buttons. She ran the slowest recorded mile in her elementary school. She secretly wanted to be a member of the Spice Girls.
JB then said there were going to be games for the audience, but we needed to know about the books. So, each author gave summaries.
The first game was called snippets. Audience members would pick a page and each author would read a few lines from that page.
The next game was called book boyfriends and it’s like The Dating Game. They called up audience members and had a bachelorette ask questions. It was adorable. Trivia was next. Melissa read questions about the books and correct answers were given candy.
It was then opened to book related Q&A
To JK: Vitro was given a cover change, which do you like more?
JK: The original cover was gorgeous and I thought it captured everything, but I love this new one too.
Internet or milk chocolate?
C: What kind of monster are you?
M: She said milk chocolate so I’ll pick internet and have dark chocolate
JK: I’ll say internet so we can all complain about no chocolate.
Favorite scene to write?
M: The kissing scene in Alienated. They are both so hyper-competitive, so it made sense that it would be a competition.
JB: There’s a scene in a cab and they’re fighting all over the cab. Every time I got to put the cab’s voice I would giggle.
C: There is sort of a funny scene in the beginning and Marguerite is trying to figure out how socially inept Paul is.
JK: For me, a lot of scenes that were my favorite were things that happened to me while I was doing research. {She then told a story about holes in the ground, someone hunting aardvarks and having a black mamba climb all over him}
For C: why Russia?
This idea came to me while on book tour. A lot of the initial dimensions came from the books that I had with me. I had just finished a book and my head was filled with Russia.
Do you feel pressure to make the science part realistic?
JB: I’m definitely on the fictional side. I hate doing research, so I would make it up. There are a lot of things that are accurate. I base them on things that futurists believe will be real in 50 or 100 years.
M: People who know me know that I don’t like to get anything wrong ever. I do my very best to nail it. I like to get it right.
JK: I start with an experiment that is already happening and I try to see where it could go wrong.
C: I’ve always enjoyed reading about science. There’s a reason why Marguerite is an art person. If she was a science person, there would be long passages about math.
It was then time for the signing. Michelle was first in line, but by the time I got over to her, someone had walked up and stopped right in front of her, so we were 2nd and 3rd.
I got to Claudia first. She told me that she didn’t have a lot of swag, but did I want a bookmark. I said yes because they’re gorgeous.
Jessica was next. I think I said hi to her, but not much else. I started struggling with my stuff, so I was turning around to put books down and pick up books and it was a mess.
When I got to Melissa, the other Jessica told her my twitter handle. Somehow that started Jessica and I talking about my reading the end of Unchanged when I got to the store. I feel like such an a-hole because I’m not sure I even said anything to Melissa. o_O
We continued the conversation about my habit of reading the ending of books first. Michelle told Jessica how Tamara Ireland Stone made me promise not to skip and read the ending of Every Last Word before she sent me an arc. That prompted Jessica to say that AJ was hers. Which made me pinky swear with her…
{There may or may not have been a conversation on Twitter about AJ and me possibly sharing Bennett in order to get AJ. Jessica had to pinky swear that she would never ever ever give Bennett to anyone. We did pinky swear, but I’m still not sure I’m prepared to give up any part of Bennett. Even if AJ is lovely.}
I thanked Jessica {thankfully, I thanked someone} and we hugged. Then Keiko found us and we chatted for a bit before heading out.
This tour is a lot of fun. It’s unique and I love that they have a different format than other tours. If you get a chance to see this tour, I highly recommend it.
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