Meeting Brandon Mull

I should title this post, "Standing in line for an hour in an overcrowded Barnes & Noble to meet Brandon Mull for 2 1/2 seconds and only getting one book signed." Oh man, it was quite a night. I dragged all my kids (including newborn baby) and my neighbor to a B&N about 12 miles away to meet Brandon Mull, author of the Fablehaven books. I love that series of books and with the latest installment coming out next month, my Fablehaven fever is in gear. I had no idea how big of a crowd would turn out. I mean, it's geared towards pre-teens and took place on a school night, so how many people could possible show up? Roughly five kazillion.

I don't know what I was expecting, a small setting and opportunity to chat like when I met Brandon Sanderson or Linda Ashman? It sure wasn't. My husband drove over after a meeting to save me from exhaustion while my neighbor pulled books off of shelves and kept my girls busy with stories. Without either of them I wouldn't have made it through. We did get to talk to Brandon Mull for a minute or two about his new series of books after Fablehaven is finished. He was very nice and was happy to sign our books and a stack of book plates for any future books we might want to purchase. I wish my kids hadn't been so tired at that point so they could have asked some questions, but they were wilting quickly.

Meeting authors is something I love to do so I won't say I'll never do that again, but I wish this experience had been better. I still love Brandon Mull's books and he was totally nice to us, even two hours after he had been signing books, so he's not diminished in my eyes. I'll just rethink this kind of adventure in the future. Here's a picture to commemorate the event. Notice the look of irritation and exhaustion on some of my kids' faces. They are little troopers, I think.