Location: The Multipurpose Room of the National Library.
Equipment: A digital camera, 2 books from the library itself, 1 book by Alexander McCall Smith and a ukulele.
No, I wasn’t planning on performing a song for him nor that I was going to borrow books but hey, I was early for the session and found myself borrowing some fantasy books there. After all, it is the library. And oh, the ukulele was cause I had gone to the music store at Bras Basah, next door to it.
So as it so happens, I ended up with the ukulele and the 2 extra books besides my original intent in bringing only the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book by him. The session was organized by the Penguin Books people and thus, they were quickly setting up things when it was just around 6pm when the actually session started at about 7pm.
See, I signed up when I got the email and was number 17 in the list, Rozen and Raven signed up just a bit after getting the email too and they were further down the list quite a bit. You can tell the whole room was filled by the time it was 7pm! Filled with lots of women and the odd male or two. And uh, Raven and I were sorta near the youngest of the lot somehow. You can definitely tell what his target audience was like in the packed room itself.
Anyway, he was really charming, funny and engaging! WHICH WAS UTTERLY HORRID FOR ME because I wanted to laugh and all that but I still had my stitches in my mouth! So I did a closed mouth laugh which I suppose sounded odd but really, he was very good! He answered questions mainly because really, at sessions like these most people want to know more about whatever they wish to know that isn’t “online” and stated in official interviews. Rozen got the chance to ask about the little white van in the book as compared to the tv series/movie and in actual fact, it’s a pick up truck but due to different language slangs, van was the most neutral word to describe it!
After the question and answer session (which was highly entertaining and informative), he had a signing. Raven and I were lucky to have our books signed before the Q&A though! He had been going around from the left side of the room towards the front to get books signed since he knew everyone probably wanted it and so, it was just making use his time! Pretty cool since it meant “lesser” time for everyone else to get their books signed after the Q&A! This was the last bit before screening the tv series that will be premiering on HBO over here. Thus, with the interactive bits of the evening done, we were treated to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’s first episode.
Sadly, we got to watch it halfway for it was 2 hours and we were only there until 9pm so everyone went “AWWWWW”. It’s not as if the viewers there didn’t know what was going to happen since we read it but it really was that good!
If he’s having a session hosted by book people or the library or whichever in your area, go to it! He’s very nice and any questions about his books or how he writes will be pretty interesting. After all, he does come out with a few books in the whole year so he did tell us he has a schedule to follow somewhat and his processes.
But ultimately, it leads to just writing it down. So if you’ve got a story of your own to tell, write it.
And perhaps have some tea while at it too.
Sounds like you have a good time at the event. 🙂 Hindsight, maybe I should have gone but, oh well.