Barnes & Noble Panel Discussion 10/15/09

Barnes & Noble Panel Discussion

New York City, NY

10/15/2009

Last night, we went to the Dashner signing in NY.  Well, if we are being fair, it was actually a panel discussion with Scott Westerfeld ( The Uglies, Leviathan), Michael Grant (Gone, Hunger), Carrie Ryan (The Forrest of Hands and Teeth) , and DASH ( you all know what Dash writes!).

The Gang trekked through 40 degree weather (cold for NY around this time...Bbbrrrr), the tail end of a Noreaster, and the New York Subways!! ( Yuck!)  for Dash and the rest of the crew.  We LOVED to see Scott Westerfeld, as Dave is reading "Leviathan" currently, and Michael Grant "Gone and Hunger are in the soon TBR pile for Dave and Lauryn",  and discovered a new author Carrie Ryan, her new book sounds awesome!

Each author had a chance to explain what their book was about and then at the end, field a bunch of questions from the audience.  What was really cool was watching the expression of amazement and wonderment on Dash's face when he got a taste of a true New Yorker.  About halfway through the discussion, this little old man (around 80 is our guess) comes in and tries to sit in an empty isle seat.  The woman sitting in the second seat in tells him quietly that the seat is taken and her boyfriend who stepped out for a minute and would be right back.  True to form, the guy starts to curse the lady out and demand that he take the seat.  Finally, the Barnes and Noble staff came over and escorted the man to a new seat in the very front row.  Dash, if you read this, I saw the look on your face... it wasn't bad at all, just more of a "what the heck is going on over there" look.  Welcome to NY buddy!

So, we had a bunch of fun and after Q & A, we got to see the "Maze Runner" trailer.  Talk about awesome....Dave told James later on that there was no doubt that it got him super excited to see the movie.  Then he remembered the trailer was for the book.  Now it is out on the B & N  site and if you click HERE and then click on "BRIGHTON LINGE", the creator of the trailer, you can watch it also.  We would suggest taking a peek as it is worth it.  When you are done MAKE SURE YOU VOTE FOR THE VIDEO AT THE TOP OF THE TRAILER SCREEN!

OK, so the best part....after James signed every one of his books he ever wrote for us (sorry James!  You should have expected nothing less!) James asked us to stick around until the signing was over for a few minutes of chatting and some pics.  After all, Dave has been on his case about it since we found out he was actually coming to NY.  Not only was Dash awesome on the panel, but he was a really nice guy as well. He was SUPER cool to our daughters. The girls remembered that he loved Doritos, so they insisted upon getting him a bag for a snack after the evening was over.  Lauryn, who just read his book for a book report promised James she would email him a copy of the report and the ENTIRE way home (with perma-grin) could not stop telling us that she is going to put the picture they took together on the cover of her report and how that would make her report the "coolest" in the class.  Thank you James for your kindness, and we think Lauryn might be one of, if not your youngest fans.

We really enjoyed our evening.  It was a ton of fun to not only see Dash, but to see the few other authors that we really respect and love their work.  We took a few pictures of them throughout the evening and will let you check them out if we can.  We actually took a bunch more, but with the cell phone ones, we had a hard time emailing them to the computer later on, so we just stuck with the digi cam shots.

Yes, these are mostly shots of us with Dash, but hey, we told you we went there to see him!  If we can get the shots of the other guys off the Blackberrys, we promise to post them.

ON A SEPARATE NOTE....

The contest for Suzanne Collin's "Catching Fire" is over in 1 day!  Last day to enter.  If you have already entered, remember that you can still get extra entries by commenting on our reviews from the time the contest was posted until now! Every one helps and the winner will be picked by random.com so it doesn't hurt to have yourself spread out in the contest with entries.

With the end of a new contest, well, you know what our goal is...to always have at least one contest running all the time.  No promises that we won't have a few occasions where we have a few days lapse, but we haven't let you down yet.  SO...Catching Fire out, what's coming in?

We do have a copy of Angie Sage's 5th book of The Septimus Heap Series "Syren" we could give away.  We still haven't decided if that coming next or soon.  What we do know is that... ARE YOU READY?????   Sometime before the end of the weekend we will be launching the countdown to our sites new look and along with that the MEGA CONTEST we have been talking about for a while now.

Yes, it is time!  For an idea of what to expect, we have a $200 Apple Store Gift Card, prize packs in the YA/Fic/Fantasy/Middle Level book categories.  Those will include books from Random House (YES, a copy of Maze Runner is in there, don't worry!), Harper Collins, Scholastic, and Sourcebook/Jabberwocky.  Unfortunately, we never heard back from Penguin  :O(  but we have not given up hope yet!  Also, we have a special friend at Harper Collins, we don't know if we can say her name (thanks J.M.) for providing us with some cool "adult" books as well.  If you know us by now, and no promises, but if you do then you know we have the possibility of adding things also as we go along.  What fund would it be if we told you everything up front???

This contest is going to be awesome as we plan to have multiple winners. We are talking like MEGA awesome with a ton of books to give away.  Besides the fact that we will be launching our site's new look when the contest is over, there is another reason for the contest.  We want to thank all of the publishers that have provided us with tons of review copies so we actually had plenty cool books to read and post about since we were up and running.  Without them, we do not know what we would have done.  Throughout the entire month of the contest, we will be reading for the most part (maybe a few exceptions thrown in there when we see fit) only books these publishers who are participating in the contest have provided us with for reviews.   We will talk about it more in the official contest launch, but there will be ways to gain extra entries by helping us thank them for their continuous support. A.H., J.M., E.P., A.V., P.S.--you guys know who you are... The Lateiner Gang thanks you for all your support.

So, keep your eyes peeled and get ready... THE BIG ONE IS COMING!

We will hopefully get a few more reviews up in the next few days and then after the contest begins, there will be plenty of reading and plenty of reviewing going on, so don't go too far away.

Thanks also goes out to our site's gang of readers.  Without you also, our site would be a very lonely one!  We appreciate each and every one of you.

Lastly, we have a few author interviews coming up over the next few weeks as well.  They are all great authors so we hope you will stop by and read those also.

We thank you very much and hope to be seeing you all here in a few days!!

THE LATEINER GANG