Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Maggie Stiefvater at Frankfurt Book Fair


~ The Arrival ~

Sabine (one of my best friends and fellow book lover) and I arrived at Frankfurt Book Fair after a 3-hour-train-ride with orientation problems(maybe because our brains felt like a twice eaten peanut due to two glorious hours of sleep the night before). You ask, what we’ve done?
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, just to make it short!
Really?
Well, our sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll: a cookie- bake-a-thon (with 1 ton of sugar and 3 tons of chocolate), a good movie followed by episodes of two of our favourite TV series, and the rocking ‘Pride and Prejudice’ soundtrack. In the end, there wasn’t a great chance for sleep.
Because we were so super excited about meeting Maggie Stiefvater?
Hell, no! We ate cookies with ten zillion calories and 1 ton of sugar in them. How could we sleep then?

So after the train ride, we finally arrived at the world’s largest Book Fair. Our pulses sped up and we rushed to stand no.1 where Jane Austen was supposed to tell us more about Mr. Darcey’s love for tight pants, but unfortunately she couldn’t be there ( had to write Mansfield Park). This is how we came to attend Maggie’s event, she was the second choice after Jane (sorry, Maggie!)…

~ The Philosophy ~

Some people become proper members of society, accepting they can’t make a living with the things they like. Once in school you loved playing music with friends, drawing or writing, but then you’ve got to change, get rid of all these highly creative hobbies and become reasonable, earn regular money at a regular job. Thanks to Maggie Stiefvater for still doing the things she likes! She didn't change and wrote Shiver, Linger, Forever beside many other projects in arts.

Just a quote to get an impression of her philosophy: “This year we had the choice between buying a house or buying a piano… I really love my Steinway!” 

Maggie Stiefvater is a highly creative person and author of our beloved  The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy. I posted my Shiver and Linger review just the days before I went to Frankfurt Book Fair to meet Maggie Stiefvater, so everyone who  might read this, already knows about her awesome novels! 

~ The Cruelty ~

She is one of my favourite YA/ romance authors and the person whose witty and just funny blog posts and tweets I enjoy most, they really make my days! But as sweet as Maggie appears on the outside, she is as cruel on the inside. She pointed out that “Characters are not funny if you are nice to them!”.
Do you know her main reason for writing books like Shiver or Linger, what inspires her? She likes to watch people cry. Then she likes to make people cry, preferably in public and wearing eye make-up.


( see yourself how comfortable she feels when talking about her liking to watch other people cry)


 ~ The Apocalypse ~

Of course I wanted to know what's going to happen to our favourite characters. I asked her if she would write a kind of spin-off series with Cole and Isabel (being her favourite character of Shiver, because she is the voice of reason). She answered that we don’t know if anyone will survive in the end. I think in her head there is destruction and chaos, laughing hunters with devil grimaces on their face reign the world, the woods are burning, and Isabel is still relaxed enough to file her nails with a burnt wolf claw. Get ready to feel excited about Forever then and be afraid that no one is going to survive it, haha!

~ The Verdict ~

Despite these devilish statements, we still felt very comfortable during the event. The lecture and questioning were awesome, so funny and everyone was happy Maggie didn’t dehydrate thanks to her hero with a bottle-opener-arm (the new protagonist of her secret project). She gave everyone a comfortable feeling, her event was just the thing you need at a Book Fair as huge as Frankfurt’s, to relax and feel familiar for just an hour of your long discovery day there!

~ The Censorship ~

Maggie: “So, I don’t really write about werewolves. I write about shape-shifters * points at her T-shirt which says: “Ask me about my shape-shifting”* … and I realized just now that I pointed at my breasts… pay no attention! “

~ The Postcard that likes to travel- maybe see you again at Frankfurt Book Fair next year ~

Because we really liked Maggie’s idea of leaving “wise” postcards in public places where a stranger can find and maybe even enjoy them, we left our own postcard to a stranger in Frankfurt. The motive was easy to choose after such an awesome event, the place was kind of set, because we had to catch our train to Cologne right then. What we wrote on our postcard to a stranger:  

DEAR STRANGER,

DON’T LET ANY FORCED DECISIONS DELAY YOUR LIFE…
AND OF COURSE DON’T LET THIS TRAIN DELAY YOUR LIFE!

The place: our train back home, which (now’s the time to laugh) really accumulated a delay of about 60 minutes on its way back home. A postcard connected with the best and worst of our day in Frankfurt… hopefully it found YOU stranger and gave you a kind of immunity against train delays!


Want to decide how reasonable I am when it comes to great books? I had the choice between buying studying literature for uni or going to Frankfurt Book Fair… I loved that day in Frankfurt:)


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