Book Signing at Borders

This past Thursday, Stephenie Meyer's book tour brought her to Fairfax, VA. As many of you are well aware, the third book in her Twilight series, Eclipse, came out a little over a month ago and she is touring the county to promote its success. It was a pretty hilarious experience! I went with some friends from my ward--Jessica, Mareille and Yanni--and I ran into my friend Kathy there too! Jessica had the clever idea to make us all t-shirts for the occasion. They said "Vote Edward Cullen 2008"--catchy, huh? A little play on the hero of the book and the ultra-political zone that is Northern Virginia. While our t-shirts were quite original, the idea to make t-shirts was certainly not. The average age of the attendants of this book signing was about 15 years old--hilarious! It's been a long time since I have been around so many screaming teeny-boppers...the last time was probably when I went to an N'Sync concert when I was 15 years old. Tons of young girls were already at Borders when I got there after work and some of them had some of the weirdest t-shirts I have ever seen!

Borders opened at 9am that morning and people were lined up since 5:30am to get a numbered ticket for the autographing line...my friends got there at 8:30 in the morning and still got 130th in line. When I got to Borders at about 5:30pm, I heard the next number for the autograph line was 800! There were probably 1,000 people at Borders for this event--second only to the last Harry Potter event they hosted. My friends got to Borders shortly before I arrived and staked out a great spot right in line with the podium for the Q&A. Some little punk teenagers were trying to box us out of our spot and we had to be very assertive about holding our ground. Telling some of these girls to "back off" was probably one of the most fun parts of the evening! hee hee.

Finally, Stephenie Meyer arrived at 7pm, did Q&A for about 20 or 25 minutes and then got to signing. She would sign as many copies of Eclipse as you put in front of her, and she would personalize them (i.e., first name only) and if you brought her earlier two books, she would only sign her name in the cover. Apparently they have done this a few time and the system her team had going worked pretty well and kept the line moving. By the time my friends and I were at the front of the line, we decided that each of us would take the picture of the girl directly in front of us as Stephenie signed our copy of Eclipse...although it didn't work out quite so smoothly for me. While I was taking Kathy's picture (a great one, by the way!), I lost my place in line and had to cut back in. As Stephenie was signing my book, I slightly leaned over the table so that Mareille could get a picture with both of us in it (no posed pictures with Stephenie allowed)...and the "handler" who was giving each book to Stephenie was yelling at me to not lean over the table...when I finally figured out that she was talking to me, I apologized and stood up straighter as Mareille still attempted to take our picture with my camera. Apparently, my camera was on play mode, so Mareille quickly switched to her own camera. By that time, Stephenie had signed my book and the "handler" was yelling at me to keep the line moving...and then actually PUSHED my back out of the way! It all happened so fast, I could hardly react! Anyway, the picture on Mareille's camera didn't turn out as bad as I imagined, given the circumstances, but I think it is kinda funny...I am smiling, but really I wanted to turn around and deck that girl! (She's the one with her cleavage hanging out.)

So, the actual signing portion of the evening was a little bit of a bust for me, but the rest of it was pretty fun... fun to be there with my friends, LOVED Stephenie Meyer--she was so great when she was answering questions, so fun and so down to earth, totally someone that makes you feel like you could be best friends-- and, we went out to get ice cream at Cold Stone afterward, so that made everything better. It was also fun to run into some friends from BYU that I haven't seen in years!