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*** “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. ***end of spoiler***

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.

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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.

My Secret Santa was Steph from Steph the Bookworm. I was so excited when I received my gift. Honestly, I had forgotten about it because I didn’t get an email about who my Santee was and thought that for whatever reason I may not have qualified. When my gift came, I started to panic and tracked down my Santee just in time to get something sent to them.

When I received my package, I didn’t realize it was for the Book Blogger Holiday Swap. So, I went right ahead and opened it. It wasn’t until I read the thoughtful card from Steph that I realized why I had received this anonymous package with awesome books in it. I wish I had realized so I could open it on Christmas. But, I’m still excited even though I opened it early.

My cat Dax decided she wanted to be in the picture with my gifts. I thought I should oblige so she didn’t take it out on my books. As you can see, Steph gave me five books, a cat bookmark, and a lovely card. The three books in the top of the picture were on my wishlist and the two in the bottom were books she added because she saw that I love historical fiction and romance. Really sweet of her, isn’t it? Thank you so much, Steph! I really appreciate the gift and the thought that went into it.

I’m excited to participate in the holiday swap next year. And, I can’t wait to see what my Santee thought of her gift.

The 2012 Classic Double Challenge is hosted by Melissa of One Librarian’s Book Reviews. The Classic Double Challenge encourages you to read one classic and a newer book that relates to the older one in some way. For example, Pride & Prejudice and Prom & Prejudice would work.

Part of the challenge is to review both books and then to compare them. This will hopefully spur some fun discussion.

There are different levels, like most challenges. I’ve decided to do the smallest again, meaning I’ll read two related books. I’ve wanted to read Pride & Prejudice for a while (and I know a few of my friends have wanted me to as well) and I think it would be fun to compare it with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. This should be a lot of fun!

For information about this challenge, check out Melissa’s post.

Challenge Guidelines

1. This challenge will run from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012.
2. As we would like to see quality reviews linked up to our monthly wrap-ups, only bloggers can enter. Sorry about that!
3. Any genre, length or format of book counts, as long as it is a book that’s been sitting on your shelf for some time now. Only books released in 2011 and earlier! No ARCs and 2012 fresh-off-the-press releases allowed!
4. You can list your books in advance or just put them in a wrap-up post. If you list them, feel free to change them as the mood takes you.
5. When you sign up in the linky, put the direct link to your post about joining the 2012 TBR Pile Reading Challenge. (You need to include the info + host list + challenge button. You can also grab the button code and add it to your sidebar!)
6. You can move up levels, but no moving down.
7. Sign-ups will be open until December 15, 2012, so feel free to join at any time throughout the year.
8. At the end of each month, one of the hosts will post a wrap-up. Every wrap-up will have its unique theme, a mini-challenge, a giveaway and place for you to link up your reviews from this month. For each review you link up, you will get one entry in a drawing of one book of choice from Book Depository. It’s open to Internationals. For participating in the mini-challenge you will get +1 entry.
9. If you miss a wrap-up post plus giveaway, you can link up your reviews next month. Do not, however, try to link up one review twice. We will be checking
10. December is a wrap-up for the whole year. All the book reviews you linked up between January and November plus the ones you’ll link up in December will be entered into a huge giveaway: 12 books, 12 winners, international.
11. You don’t have to follow all the hosts to join the challenge, but you do have to follow all of us to be entered in giveaways!

Levels

• 1-10: A Firm Handshake
• 11-20: A Friendly Hug
• 21-30: A Sweet Kiss
• 31-40: Love At First Sight
• 41-50: Married With Children

Hosts

• Evie from Bookish: @SeoEvie
• Nicole from All I Ever Read: @Nicoleabouttown
• Bonnie from Hands and Home: @HandsHomeBlog
• Donna from Book Passion for Life: @BookPforLife
• Caitlin from WatchYA Reading: @caitlingss
• Rie from Mission to Read: @missiontoread
• Vicky from Books, Biscuits & Tea: @alouetteuette
• Christa from Hooked on Books: @ChristasBooks
• Jenna from Fans of Fiction: @fansoffiction
• Angel from Mermaid Vision Books: @mermaidvisions

The 2012 DAC is hosted by Kristi from The Story Siren. The objective is the same as last year, which is to read at least 12 debut novels from young adult or middle grade authors. You don’t have to be a blogger to join, but you do have to post your reviews on Goodreads if you’re not and your reviews must be in English. The challenge runs from January 1, 2012 to January 31, 2013. Only debut novels released in 2012 qualify for the challenge. The rules have changed a little bit this year and a few new events have been added to help make it more fun, so don’t forget to visit The Story Siren to check out the details and sign up.

Good luck to all who plan to participate! I know I’ll need it.

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!

One of my favorite things about Pinterest is the love of books that pinners seem to have. I’ve found so many fun bookish things that I’d love to have while perusing the millions upon millions of pinned items. Here are some of my favorites:

I also have a board just for Harry Potter. Here are a few of my favorite Potter finds:

Another one of my favorite things is that Pinterest keeps track of where you’ve pinned an item from so you can find the original source. This is especially helpful for giving credit where credit is due.

If you’d like an invite, let me know and I’ll hook you up.