I told myself I’d never go to another midnight showing because I’m too old and tired. But, getting the chance to see The Hunger Games on opening night with a bunch of my blogging buddies was too good to pass up!

Penelope from The Reading Fever coordinated the whole thing. She bought tickets at a theater with reserved seating, so we could all sit by each other and not have to be there until right before the movie started.

Before the movie, we went to a late dinner at Chili’s. (I was very careful with my calories that day, so I could enjoy a nice cup of soup. It was so yummy!) While we were there, Penelope had a reaping in which we won prizes. We definitely got a better deal in the reaping than the Tributes. I won an awesome Mockingjay pin, which I wore to the movie! She also gave all of us Team Katniss bracelets.

While at dinner, I met a fun new book blogger, Kami from Kami’s Library Thoughts. She’s really good friends with Emily from Emily’s Reading Room and decided to take the plunge and start a new book blog on March 1.

I wasn’t able to interact with everyone there, but I did get to see some of my favorite bloggers: Suey from It’s All About Books, Emily, Penelope, and Enna Isilee from Squeaky Books. I actually carpooled with Suey, two of her sisters, and her daughter and sat by her in the theater too.

It was a lot of fun and Penelope did an awesome job putting everything together! I’ll definitely be up for this when Catching Fire comes out in a couple of years! Thanks, Penelope, for your hard work!

On Tuesday, I had the chance to go to the launch party for The Savage Grace by Bree Despain at The King’s English with Corey and a couple of friends. The launch party was a lot of fun not only because I got to get my copy of The Savage Grace (finally!), but also because I got to see some of my blog, Twitter, and author friends and talk to Bree for a little bit.

At the launch party for The Lost Saint, Bree talked about how writing sequels are hard. At this launch party she said that writing the end is even harder because for her entire writing career, she was learning how to actually write a novel not finish a trilogy.

She said there were four obstacles she had to face. The first was that she had created all these threads in the first two books that she had to now weave together into something coherent. The second was that she had created all these characters, and even introduces more in The Savage Grace, that she has to make sure have a decent ending to their own story. The third was that she had to deal with the situations she created that she’d put off until the last book. And, the fourth was that she had to say goodbye to characters who have been living in her head for seven years.

She said that she kept putting off writing the last two chapters because she wanted to write the “perfect ending.” She even handed in the final draft of the manuscript without the last two chapters. Her agent thought it was the end and when she told him it wasn’t, he told her that she had better get the ending in quick because the rest of the manuscript was in copyedits and they were going to print in two days! She wrote the ending in one long all nighter. She said she’s not sure if the “perfect ending” exists, but she’s really happy with how The Savage Grace all came together.

I’m pretty excited to read it. I have some wants that I hope are fulfilled. But, even if they aren’t, I’m sure the book will end satisfactorily. I did tell Bree that she’d better be on retainer so that when I need her to talk me through the harder parts, I can get a hold of her. What can I say?! The endings always stress me out, especially when love triangles are involved.

On Friday, my friends and I hosted a party for Brodi Ashton to celebrate the release of Everneath. We’ve all been looking forward to this party for a while now!

For dinner, we themed it after the soup kitchen in the book. Everyone said that the food was awesome. (I would’ve taken pictures, but I stayed away from the food as much as possible so I didn’t thwart my juice fast.)

We hung black cloth in between the kitchen and living room to symbolize going into the Everneath. It was a fun effect. And, my friend Shauna made lockers out of cardboard to symbolize the school.

After everyone ate, we talked to Brodi and asked her some questions. She shared her tour experience as well as some of the more bizarre emails she’s received from fans. We talked about the sequel a little bit (mostly release date, title, cover, etc.).

We also played a couple of games, which ended up being really fun and quite funny. One game is a game my friend Kayla came up with for our party we had to celebrate The Host. Basically, we have to solve some scenarios using only the items in our purse. Many of the solutions were creative and funny, especially one which involved creating a sign using a maxi pad as the adhesive. The other game was a form of Mad Libs in which specific words in the story of Persephone and Hades were replaced by ones of our choosing without realizing how they’d play their parts. It ended up being hilarious!

My friend Nancy surprised everyone with a Park City High School water bottle. She also gave Brodi a Park City High School fleece blanket (that’s why Brodi is under a blanket in the picture below). We were all floored yet again by her generosity.

We had a great time hanging out with Brodi and her mom!

On Tuesday, I went to the Everneath launch party at The King’s English to help support Brodi Ashton. The launch party was a lot of fun. It was the largest I’ve ever been to. And, by that, I mean more people showed up to this launch party than any other launch party I’ve been to. My friends and I showed up 35 minutes before it started. We were in the process of saving seats for our other friends who were on their way when all of a sudden every seat in the place was taken. The King’s English staff got more chairs, but it took less than a minute for them to all be taken as well. The gallery was packed like sardines, standing room only for more than half of the attendees. And, that is no exaggeration!

Brodi talked about her road to success by doing her first ever PowerPoint presentation. It was a huge success! The crowd was laughing at her hilarity. (She’s really a very funny person. If she ever gets tired of writing novels, she should be a stand-up comedian or a writer for TV or movies.) She also showed us about a quarter of the rejection letters she received in the querying process for her first novel, Echo. She was “excited” to receive her first personalized rejection rather than just all the form-letter rejections. It was interesting to find out that that rejection was actually from Suzanne Collins’ agent and the agent rejected Brodi’s manuscript because he/she already had The Hunger Games manuscript on her desk getting ready to be published. After her presentation, the crowd was able to ask some questions. Some of the questions were:

• “Is it harder to write under deadline?” She answered yes.
• “Where did you get your idea?” She said that Sam, her husband, challenged her to write a heroine completely different from her first heroine. So, she thought of writing about a heroine who was broken yet strong. And, as she started thinking about that, she started thinking about why she was broken and Everneath was born.
• “Was the title always Everneath?” She said no. At first, it was Broken, then it was Underneath. Then, she and Bree Despain, friend and fellow author, decided to play with the words “forever” and “underneath” and came up with Everneath.

• Spoiler: Show

  “Did you mean to write a love triangle?” She said she doesn’t think of the book as being a love triangle. Cole is the villain. Nikki knows who she wants and it’s not the villain.

After the questions, Brodi signed books. She started around 7:30 pm. My friends and I were the second to the last in the line and our books were signed around 9:40 pm. Two hours of signing for a debut author! Isn’t that incredible?! The wait was definitely worth it.

I’m so glad I was able to go and show my support for Brodi. I absolutely love her writing style. I’ve had a chance to read both Echo and Everneath and I love them both. I hope that one day Brodi can also publish Echo. But, if not, I’m sure whatever she does publish will continue to be fantastic.

Last Thursday, I had the chance to meet Marissa Meyer, the author of Cinder, at the Provo Library. I’ve wanted to read Cinder ever since I saw the cover. (I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I love it!) When I found out Marissa Meyer was coming to my library, I was really excited. Unfortunately, with everything going on, I haven’t had a chance to read Cinder yet, but I do plan to read it soon.

Before the actual event hosted by the library, Utah book bloggers were invited to a meet-n-greet with Marissa Meyer. We got to sit down with her in a more personable setting and chat. We talked about our favorite books from last year, how she came up with the idea of Cinder, and a little about her writing history and routines. She’s been writing since she was 14 when she started to write fan fiction for Sailor Moon. She’s from Tacoma, Washington and just got married in October. Her husband and her publisher accompanied her on tour. It was a lot of fun to sit down before hand and get to know her a little bit in a more intimate setting.

At the actual event, she talked about Cinder and the future sequels. Each of them are based on futuristic retellings of a fairy tale. Cinder is based on Cinderella. Scarlet, the second book in the series, will be based on Little Red Ridinghood. Crest will be based on Rapunzel. And, Winter will be based on Snow White. Each book takes place in a different area of the world in which the stories are set, and Cinder will be the main character in each book, but she’ll encounter Scarlet, Crest, and Winter as she continues through her journey to overpower the Lunars.

Meyer said she pitched Cinder as a series because it was always meant to be four books. Even though a lot of fellow writers told her to just pitch it as one book and let agents and publishers decide, she didn’t want to deceive them by giving them Cinder, with its cliffhanger ending of sorts, and then be all like, “Oh yeah, it’s supposed to be four books.” Luckily, her agent and publisher saw the potential of the story and signed a deal for all four books.

She said she came up with the story as part of a contest. She wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo and noticed a contest with a prize of a walk-on role on Star Trek for the person who wrote the most words during NaNoWriMo. She wrote just over 150,000 words but still came in third place. But, a very early version of Cinder was the fruits of her labor so it wasn’t a total loss.

I’m excited to read Cinder. It sounds like something I’ll enjoy a lot and I look forward to the sequels as well. I really enjoyed meeting Marissa Meyer and getting to know her a little bit. All in all, it was a great evening with her and friends.

I’m a guest blogger on my dear friend’s blog today–There’s a Book. I talk about my two favorite Christmas books. Hop on over and say hi!

Last Thursday, I had the chance to see Breaking Dawn, Part 1 with many of my SLTA friends at an early showing. My friend Olivia rented out a theater and invited us to come along. And, as part of the fun, some of us ordered shirts for the event.

As far as the movie is concerned, I actually really enjoyed it. Yes, there were laughable parts (that weren’t meant to be laughable), but I still liked it. It’s the closest movie to its book, which I think has to do with Stephenie Meyer being a producer now. And, I’m really excited for the second one because I think they’ll do a good job with it (and add more action than the book has).

Before I talk about all the things that I loved, let’s get the few complaints I have out of the way.

• At first, I really liked the scene in which the wolves spoke to each other. I liked the disjointed images Jacob saw as he was running through the forest and all the other voices in his head. But, as soon as Sam and Jacob started speaking to each other, the voices sounded weird, kind of like Darth Vader meets Optimus Prime. And, the voices sounded overly dramatic.
• The imprinting scene was … awkward. But, honestly, I don’t think there was any other way to do it and it’s a little creepy in its own right anyway.
• The dream sequence, like all the other dream sequences in the movies, was weird. It’s not how I pictured it and I didn’t like that they used the wedding guests instead of the immortal children.
• The makeup and wigs are still awkward and fake-looking. Poor Carlisle and the blond Denali vampires (other than Irina). Although, I did think Jasper looked better in this one than he has in the others, which is a plus and a miracle.
• I’m one of the fans that actually enjoyed the book. But, I knew the story was very cheesy and seeing those scenes on screen made the cheesiness more real.
• The wolves seemed less real in this movie than in New Moon and Eclipse. I’m not sure why, but the animation didn’t seem as refined. But, at least it wasn’t Lupin terrible.

Not too shabby, right? I honestly don’t have a lot of complaints as you can see because I thought they improved on a lot of things this time around (especially the acting). I absolutely loved the following:

• Even though the birth scene was extremely gruesome, it was actually my favorite part of the entire movie. It was seen through Bella’s perspective which gave it a disconnected feeling. I knew it was described as that bloody and horrific in the book, but seeing it come to life was a little surprising because I guess I didn’t picture it that horrifically in my mind.
• I loved Bella’s transformation. Watching the Photoshopping happen on screen as she turned from a mere mortal into a beautiful vampire was just so cool! It was really well done.
• They did an awesome job making Bella look as emaciated as she did while she was pregnant with Renesmee. I wish they could’ve applied that makeup awesomeness to some of the vampires.
• Normally, I hate added scenes in movies. But, I actually really enjoyed that the Cullens and wolves fought after Renesmee’s birth. It gives me hope that there will be fighting in the second movie instead of just talking and diplomatic solutions.
• I like who they got to play Renesmee and can’t wait to see how her aging process works in the second movie.
• I told my friend Debbie that I haven’t liked Robert Pattinson as Edward. He just never sat well with me. But, in this movie, whatever they did to his makeup or hair made him more appealing. Now, if only he’d shave his chest, then he may be perfect or as close to perfect as an actor can get to Edward.
• Aro became my hero in the short scene during the credits! He’s a grammar Nazi like I am!
• I loved Bella’s wedding dress.
• And, of course, as always, I loved Charlie. Billy Burke is the best thing that happened to these movies.

Overall, I was very happy with the film. It did as good of a job as it could with the storyline the book had. So, if you’re like I am and you liked the book, then I think you’ll like the movie. But, if you didn’t like the book, then I doubt there’s a chance you’ll like the movie either.

On November 1st, I had the opportunity to attend the launch party for Crossed by Ally Condie at The King’s English bookshop with a few of my friends. (Corey even came with me to this one.)

At the time of the book launch, I was about a third of the way done with an ARC of Crossed I had borrowed from my blogger friend Emily of Emily’s Reading Room, so I knew a little about what had happened. Luckily, Ally didn’t want to spoil anyone since the book had just been released that day and didn’t really go into great detail about the plot.

One of the things I enjoyed about the launch party was Ally’s vision for the setting. She said that as she wrote Matched, Southern Utah came into her mind whenever she thought about the Outer Provinces. She hiked in the slot canyons with her family almost every weekend while she was growing up, so the setting is very personal to her. And, as I’ve read about the Carving in the book, a very vivid landscape comes to mind. In fact, it reminds me of the episode of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls finds himself stranded in Southern Utah, which is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing that terrain up close and personal.

She also talked about how Matched emphasized poetry and Crossed emphasizes art. One of the 100 paintings that Cassia is familiar with is the one entitled “Chasm of the Colorado” by Thomas Moran (an image of this painting is available at Novel Notice, one of the blog tour stops posted by Ally). Ally was introduced to this painting by her mother and she felt it would be a good painting for the Matched trilogy because it represented not only the Outer Provinces, but also the wildness and unknown of Cassia’s adventure to join the rebellion against the Society.

Actually, if you’ve been following Ally’s blog tour posts for Crossed, you’ll notice that she talked about many of the things she had already or continues to guest post about on the tour. It’s all very interesting and I recommend you check those posts out.

Ally also was the keynote speaker at the Teen Book Fest at the Provo City Library last weekend. I went with a few of my blogger buddies: Suey, Jenny, Emily, and Enna Isilee. The teen book fest also had authors Elana Johnson, Robison Wells, and Kristen Landon. Unfortunately, due to lots of homework, I was only able to stay for Ally’s keynote presentation and the signing afterward. If you’d like a great recap of the other authors’ presentations, check out Suey’s post.

Ally talked again mainly about what she did at the launch. When she saw me at the event, she told me that she felt bad that I had to listen to her talk about the same things again. I laughed and told her that I didn’t mind.

Ally is one of the most gracious, humble people I’ve ever met. Seriously, if you ever have the chance to meet her, I’m sure you’ll find she’s super sweet and sociable. All in all, it was a great couple of events and I’m glad I could go and spend some time with friends and talking to Ally.

Remember that post about a month ago talking about how my group of friends and I got interviewed because of our involvement with Twilight? It aired bright and early this morning!

Unfortunately, I can’t embed it. But, here’s the link to the spot. (There may be a geographic redirect for people outside of Utah–annoying–so you may need to scroll down to the Live Interviews section and click the “What’s Next for Twilight Fan Club?”) My friends Danylle and Jamie were able to be there live this morning to answer questions after the spot aired. They represented our group well.

Once you watch the segment, come back and tell me what you think. I’ll tell you what I think right now, but don’t read it until after you’ve watched the clip. (I don’t want to taint your view, lol.) After seeing this, I feel like Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove. “Is that my voice? Is that MY voice?” Seriously, is that how I sound? I think I may need to invest in a voice coach so I don’t sound so annoying. And, I may need to take a public speaking class so I can learn not to “um” as much as I do, lol.

It was fun and I’m excited that our group got our 15 minutes of fame and that we could mention and promote other local authors too.

PS–When I was being interviewed, I mentioned how we had the chance to meet other fans around the country and that we’re friends with much more than just our local group. But, it didn’t make it into the segment.

Alison of Alison Can Read is devoting all of November to Twilight to celebrate the release of the first Breaking Dawn movie. Today, I’m her guest and I share my story of how much Twilight has impacted my life. Hop on over and say hi!

The one thing I realized I forgot to say, which may be okay since my post is already a few miles long, is that I have friends from all over the world because of Twilight and the Lex. I love those friends just as much as I love my local Utah friends and I hope I get to meet the ones that I haven’t met someday and see those that I have again. My friends are seriously the best!