Charlaine Harris Book Signing

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the Dead Ever After book signing with Charlaine Harris at Ghillie Dhu in Edinburgh. When I first found out that Charlaine was coming to my city I was over the moon. One of the drawbacks of living in Scotland and having favourite authors that are all American is that they very rarely venture to these shores. Usually when they come to the UK it's just London they visit. My excitement at learning that, finally, one of them was headed my way was therefore immense.

I'm probably not alone in coming to the Sookie Stackhouse books through the TV show True Blood. Ironically when the first series aired here in Britain we were having a very hot, humid summer, much like we are now. I remember sitting up in my room every Friday night at 10pm, sweltering away in the heat, feeling like I was actually in Louisiana. It took all of one episode to get me hooked and the next again week I had ordered the first three books online. The rest of that year was dedicated to reading the first ten books in the series and I quickly fell in love with a certain Eric Northman, who is even more amazing in the books than he is in the TV show (where, let's face it, he is pretty damn awesome!)

Admittedly I haven't read any of the books since the 10th. This is partly down to the poor reviews they received and also partly due to being caught up reading other series. All the same, I was determined that I wasn't going to miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet Charlaine face-to-face and to hear her discuss the Sookie books.


Along with one of my friends, I joined a whole army of fans to hear her talk about the end of the series and her new project, a crime novel with supernatural elements set in the town of Midnight, Texas. It sounds like it will be quite fun and I will definitely be looking out for it when it's published. The setting for the talk, in the auditorium at Ghillie Dhu was suitably gothic and atmospheric. Three huge chandeliers lit with candles and a high, arched ceiling, made the perfect backdrop for a discussion about the supernatural. Hats off to the Waterstones team for organising it.

Charlaine herself was lovely. She is warm and friendly and so humorous. She had us all laughing with her various quips and I loved the wryness with which she kept referring to her publishers. Coming from a publishing course, I could appreciate her remarks and found them highly amusing. She answered so many questions, some of them particularly interesting, such as her thoughts on Anna's portrayal of Sookie in the TV show. It was fun to hear her talking about the actors, and her praise of Nielsen Ellis, who plays Lafayette was a wonderful way to round off the night. The only down point was when one stupid person revealed the ending, literally five minutes after Charlaine had just commented that there were probably people there who hadn't read Dead Ever After yet. As one of those people I was not exactly happy, although I did kind of guess that it would end that way (I am not giving away spoilers; I believe in surprises).

The queue for the actual signing snaked all the way round the hall. In this heat it was quite dizzying, but Charlaine was so nice to everyone. Unfortunately the picture of me is not very good, but at least I have some photographic evidence that I met her! I told her how much I like her work and she said that was very kind and when my friend, Amy, told her how funny she was she was glad that we found her so. She even said thank you and goodbye after singing our books, which I thought was lovely. She was so down-to-earth and her accent is the most adorable thing in the world!

It was a simply fabulous evening and I'm thrilled to pieces that I met one of my favourite authors. Hopefully in the years to come I will get a chance to meet some of the others (are you listening Karen Chance, Richelle Mead and Cassandra Clare?). In the meantime I'm now looking forward to the Book Festival where hopefully I can attend some more events and indulge my inner book nerd!

My signed copy of Dead Ever After