Signed Sea Glass giveaway and Event Summary

Last night I dragged hubby into central London for Maria N. Snyder's London signing to celebrate the UK release of her latest novel Sea Glass. The event took place at the Shortwave Cinema in Bermondsey which was a great venue.

The evening began with a relaxed atmosphere. Maria sat signing and chatting with her fans very informally for longer than an hour.

Here is a pic of me getting my book signed:

Once Maria had signed all the books, we went into the cinema which seats about 50 people and listened to her do a short reading from Chapter 2 of the book.

Maria then took questions. I couldn't actually think of any questions to ask even though I had only finished reading Storm Glass on Sunday [review up later this week]. Some much more thoughtful fans did have some questions up their sleeves. Trisha - from Murder One - asked about the pronunciation of some of the character names and places. It was interesting to hear how different readers imagined the names said aloud. A couple of people in the audience were interested in whether Maria felt pressured to write a vampire novel. She said no but that she had written a vampire short story for an anthology and that she'd like to explore those characters further. So vampire fans, you never know! Maria also talked about the fact that she doesn't plot out a whole series before writing. She just has a vague idea of a character and then explores them. This was music to my ears as that is the way I go about writing too and Maria is the first author I have ever heard confess to writing this way. How encouraging!

While I was at the signing, I also got to meet fellow British book blogger Jenny from Wondrous Reads. It was great to meet Jenny and she promised me that I don't sound like Stacey from the XFactor so that is a relief. It was really nice to have the chance to talk about blogging and I think they'll be another discussion post on Saturday as Jenny got the cogs in my brain turning so watch out for that.

Now on to the contest!

I bought an extra copy of Sea Glass and got it signed to giveaway to one of my wonderful followers! Here it is:

Entry form below. Please remember to check the Contest Policy for guidelines.

• Open internationally
• Closing date Friday 29th January 2010

Good luck everyone!