San Francisco Signing Adventure

On Tuesday, the long-awaited second book in Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles, The Wise Man's Fear, was released to the world. On Thursday, I met up with my friend to hear him read from it and then sign my copy!

I met up with my friend and we took BART into San Francisco for the reading/signing. It was sponsored by SF in SF and drew quite an interest! We had RSVP'd for the event only hours after hearing that we needed to and only managed to get seats in the lobby, and not the theater proper. We were there early, but the friend I went with bought themselves a copy of The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle, Pat Rothfuss' picture-book-that-isn't-for-children, and we read it together during the wait, as neither one of us had before. It was good, if rather unexpected!

That little screen was my view of the event - not as bad as it looks!

The event began with a reading, followed by a Q&A session (I won't ramble on about those - if you're interested I believe it's being podcasted on The Agony Column Podcast), and then book signing. While my friend and I were there for Patrick Rothfuss, the event was actually for two authors, the other being the lovely Gail Carriger. I hadn't heard of her before the reading, but I enjoyed the excerpts she read from her latest book, and she had some very interesting and entertaining things to say during the Q&A. Her books sounded like the sort of thing I'd like, so while waiting to be called in to get my books signed by Pat, I decided to get the first of Gail's books, Soulless. She complemented my jacket, signed it in pink pen (it matched the cover! How could I not love that?), and let me take a picture with her! All around she was quite lovely, and well-dressed to boot.

After a long wait, it was finally time to get signed by Patrick Rothfuss. I had my copy of The Name of the Wind as well as The Wise Man's Fear for me and a friend who couldn't make the signing themselves. Stack of books in hand, I waited, my nervousness abated by the easygoing manner in which Pat interacted with the fans ahead of me in line. In a lot of ways, he seems very much in real life like he does on his blog, which isn't always the case with some people. After getting my books signed I wanted a picture. He asked what sort of picture I wanted, offering up a few options.. friendly, serious, pensive.. "I don't know if I can do pensive," he said, so of course I insisted on pensive! Luckily he's a good sport.

Then we took a friendly picture as well:

Patrick was fantastic - friendly, entertaining (there may have been a wee bit of singing at the beginning..) - it was a lot of fun, and the experience was definitely worth all the driving and waiting I had to do!

After that, there was not much to do but go home, sleep, and get started on the book! I'm a little more than 300 pages into right now and I am absolutely loving it. Rothfuss has a skill with words that I can only dream and be envious of. I'm torn between the part of me that can't put the book down and the part of me that will be terribly sad to finish and know how long I'll have to wait for the next one!