Sarah J. Maas’s Singapore Book Signing

 

Last month, I received an email from Popular bookstore (a local bookstore in Singapore). The email was just a regular one that talked about the sales they were having in their store. And in that email, at the bottom, in extremely tiny print, was the announcement that Sarah J. Maas was doing a Singapore signing. I flipped out for two reasons. Firstly, Sarah is one of my favourite authors and secondly, HOW DARE THEY ANNOUNCE HER SIGNING IN TINY PRINT IN A REGULAR EMAIL?? They should have dedicated a whole email to her signing! I mean I almost missed it! Anyway, I was super glad that I saw it and I was extra glad that the date didn’t clash with my internship.

I thought about live blogging throughout the event but then decided that I wanted to be off my phone as much as possible during that time so I could really enjoy the experience. I did end up on Twitter a lot before the signing though because as you’ll see later, Sarah retweeted me and because of that, loads of people started liking my tweets and asking me questions about the signing and I couldn’t really put my phone down. But once Sarah arrived, I got my brother (who has never even heard of Sarah before) to be my photographer and I just focused on the experience.

I did scribble a few updates down though so you can just see the timeline of things here:

4.11pm: I’m on my way to Jurong for the signing with my brother! He’s helping me carry my books in his backpack (Come on. I didn’t tolerate this child for 18 years for nothing)

5.12pm: I’m at the bookstore and I’ve bought Queen of Shadows and Crown of Midnight. We are so early but it’s worth it!

5.15pm: They are setting up the tables!

5.24pm: Sarah retweeted my tweet and replied me!

5.59pm: Kinda made friends with the girls in front of us. It’s so cool to be amongst so many hardcore bookworms!

7pm: IT’S STARTED!!

7.30pm: She just finished the Q&A! Someone asked if she will have kids once TOG is over and it was so funny because she talked about her dogs

7.45pm: She’s starting to sign and I’m up next!

8.54pm: I can’t even begin to process what just happened.

Okay. Let’s talk about the signing. So let me just say that Sarah is so beautiful and nice and kind in person. I really was afraid that she wouldn’t be as nice as I always thought she was but she turned out to be so lovely and funny and she was such a good sport about answering everyone’s questions.In particular, I loved her answer when the moderators asked her what her dream cast was for the characters when both series becomes a movie and a TV show. She very passionately talked about how much she hated white-washing in Hollywood and how she wanted her cast to retain the skin colours they had when she wrote the books. She also gushed a lot about Scott Eastwood. And I mean A LOT.

She also briefly talked about the title release of the 5th TOG book which was happening that night (last night) and we begged her to give us a hint and she was so funny about it (she didn’t reveal anything). She told us that when she posted the teaser graphic for the title release on Instagram, she had the title graphic right beside the teaser on her phone and she was so afraid that she would post the wrong one.

Then the moderators came up with a bunch of scenarios for the Throne Of Glass characters  and asked Sarah to elaborate on them. My favourite was when they said that all the main TOG characters were in a theme park and they asked Sarah what each person would be doing. On the spot, she immediately spun a cool story of all the characters and how they would be acting and what they would say and it was so cute!

Then came the actual book signing. I ended up 4th in line because the girls in front of us were in a group of 3. When I finally got to Sarah, I just gushed about how she was my favourite author, how much I love her books and how this was my first time attending a book signing. She was so nice. She actually remembered that I tweeted her earlier and she asked me how long I was waiting and when I said 2 hours, she seemed genuinely shocked. Almost like, why would anyone wait 2 hours for me and I just found that to be so humble of her. She also asked me how long it took me to get to the location and was genuinely surprised when I said an hour. She signed 4 of my books and she said thank you so sincerely at the end.

Overall, yesterday was amazing. It was actually the first time that I had met so many book lovers and bloggers face to face. I mean I usually fangirl a lot online but I have never really talked to book people in real life so it was so nice.

Also, the moderators were the bloggers from A Page Of Heaven and they actually are in my course in school and we’ve always known of each other but we never had any reason to talk until yesterday and it was just so lovely to formally meet them and we actually talked for ages.

Because we were talking, I ended up unintentionally staying for the whole signing. Sarah signed for 30 minutes more then she was scheduled to and then we got to take a group photo with the people that stayed. Which reminds me, individual photos with Sarah and videography were actually not allowed.

Then I went home with the biggest smile on my face and gushed about it with my bookclub and on Twitter ad basically to anyone that would listen because I have officially met Sarah J. Maas.