On Tuesday, I had the chance to go an event at my library with Cinda Williams Chima as the featured guest. She’s the author of the Heir Chronicles and the Seven Realms Quartet. I was really excited to go because one of my blogger buddies, Emily from Emily’s Reading Room, told me that her books are fantastic. I have to take her word for it because I haven’t read them yet. But, the event was fun anyway.
I always look forward to these events, even when I haven’t read the books, because I not only get to meet great authors, but I also get to hang out with friends. I got to see my really good friend, and aspiring author, Rachel and her daughter. I also got to hang out with a couple of my book blogger buddies: Jenny of Alternate Readality, Suey of It’s All About Books, and Emily (mentioned above).
Chima talked about how she has been writing stories since she was in the third grade and her first novels were written during junior high. Her novels were romance and they starred her and her friends and they always ended up with the cute guy. She then said she took a break for a little while before she started writing again. She decided to write YA fantasy because she wanted to write something her two teenage boys would enjoy reading.
After her first book, The Warrior Heir, was published, she started to write the Seven Realms. She took the story from a 500,000-word tome she had written prior to being published and prior to writing the Heir Chronicles. This tome was an adult high fantasy story. She used a lot of her research and character development from this tome to come up with the published Seven Realms, a YA high fantasy series.
The Seven Realms was meant to be a trilogy, but when she realized she was already 500 pages into The Gray Wolf Throne (the third book in the series) and no closer to wrapping things up, the series morphed into a quartet. The Crimson Crown is scheduled to be released Fall 2012. We got to see a preliminary mockup of the cover, and it’s really cool. (She also informed us that the Heir Chronicles will have two more stories added to the current trilogy.)
She also talked about how she uses her real-life experiences to dream up her stories and worlds. She gave an example of her grandmother who was said to have second sight and would read cards to tell people’s fortunes, which ended up in one of her novels. She also uses familiar landscapes, such as the New Zealand greenery and mountains and Yellowstone’s geysers and hotspots, to create and describe the worlds in her books.
I found it interesting that she has a twin sister Linda and is the older of the two. Most people think she was named Cinda to rhyme with Linda. In reality, she was named first and named after Cinda from House Divided. (I also loved finding out that she’s a lefty, like I am, when she signed my books. It gave us something to talk about since I haven’t read her books yet.)
I look forward to reading her books. In fact, I bought The Warrior Heir and The Demon King to get them signed. To my surprise, I was one of the raffle winners and won a copy of The Exiled Queen to add to my library. I was very excited to win, which my friends can attest to.














After the performance, Emily signed books. She had quite a following of friends, family, fellow authors, readers, and book bloggers. Utah is so great in its support for local authors and it’s always great to see that support at these events.