On Wednesday the 3rd of September my mother and I made our way to The Library at Docklands for an evening with the amazing LAINI TAYLOR author of the ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ Trilogy.
We caught the train in to the city seeing as I live in the outer suburbs and got off at Southern Cross train station. This happens to be a really pretty train station if you’re ever visiting Melbourne and it’s super close to Docklands which is extremely convenient! So we walked down to the library, which is not in such a convenient location but was none the less a wonderful library to discover. It’s only been open for 2 months and my initial impression was a positive one, it looks like a really great spot to find some good books and to just chill for the day, it’s just a shame that it’s so far for me to get to (an hour each way).
So we headed up the stairs to a large room in which the evening would be taking place, while queuing up to go in Laini Taylor was standing outside the room talking with some people and I approached her because I had this little balloon Karou made for her that I wanted to give her. She loved it! So I was happy, and then I introduced myself and she recognised me from a twitter post I’d posted in the morning and she had favourited. (Let me tell you there was some fangirling at my end when that happened). Which was pretty amazing, someone else then came up to get her photo taken and I went back to the que. In we went, my mother and I sat near the front on the left side, second row from the front in fact because the I’d forgotten my glasses and I wanted to be able to see.
Laini was introduced and then came in and talked about how ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ came into being. It was such a cool explanation and while I’d love to go in to detail about it I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who plans on seeing her in the near future or anything. I will tell you that as an aspiring writer it was incredibly inspiring and it was nice to know that even accomplished writers use prompts to get the creativity flowing. Laini told us about the various notebooks she keeps as well, with lists of words she likes or characters or story snippets etc, which is very similar to me. She was really interesting to listen to, very funny and she answered the questions with enthusiasm and a real sense of honesty.
I will tell you that I asked about the variations in the covers and if she had a preference. Just in case you weren’t aware sometimes a novel can be published by different publishers depending on the country which in turn affects the covers. In Australia more often then not the British covers are the ones released here and not the American covers. The American covers are the ones I have and can be seen earlier in this post. Anyway Laini was telling us how the authors don’t really have any say in the covers of their books, nor the title for that matter, which i was a little shocked to discover. She originally called ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone‘ simply wishbone however it turned out to be a old tv show about a dog that solved crimes. Anyway the publishers who put out the American cover were a young adult publishing house and therefore Laini considers them more YAish and feels they were more aimed at girls, her Uk publishing house is not Ya and so the covers are sophisticated and elegant and unisex in their audience which she loves. She said she loves both covers but it did sound as though the uk/aus ones might be more of what she imagined for her books.
I felt really special to be able to go to an event like this, it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve been to an author event/signing which is such a shame. I remember going to a Mallory Blackman one in England but I must of been 10 so that was 11 years ago (gee time flies). The ya community is a large one on Instagram, YouTube and blogs and I know Australia is pretty far away from everything but it would be nice if more authors could visit us here! So thank you to everyone who made last night a thing and most importantly, thank you to Laini Taylor for not only writing these wonderful and magical books but for sharing a little insight to your world with us.
Toddles for now peeps!
Rebecca xxx
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