Friday, April 13, 2012

are you a cat or a dog person?

my younger brother and a couple of his friends have semi-recently become obsessed with the book series warriors. i had never heard of the series before, but i'm always happy to see people still obsessing over books. on saturday we went to the mall and saw that erin hunter, the author of the series, would be doing a reading/signing thursday (yesterday). i've never been able to go to a book signing of any of the authors i like for various reasons, so i was excited for him when he got permission to go. she was actually a really entertaining speaker, and now i feel like i have to go and read all of the books (of which there are like a million and seventeen). apparently the series started in 2000? how have i not heard of it before is what i've been wondering. the thing started at seven and we didn't get his books signed until almost nine:thirty (worrying the whole time that she would get tired and leave before our turn), but we met a bunch of cool people in line and he was so excited to go show his friends his signed copies today that the three plus hours standing was totally worth it (we got there shortly after six).

here are some of the things i learned from/about erin last night:
*she hates cats (more of a dog person), but harper collins had asked her to do a series about cats and "a desperate artist will do anything for money."
*she didn't start liking the books or the characters until the third one when she realized that she could write whatever she wanted because "we all knew no one would buy the books anyway."
*her inspiration for the books: she loves thinking of ways to kill cats. for example, in her latest book she realized that she had never paralyzed a cat and then had it live out a slow and lingering death. so she threw a tree at one of them and had it break its back. around the same time, her cousin got drunk and dived into a river, breaking his neck in three spots and becoming paralyzed from the waste down. she let the cat live for him and believes that "when her cousin walks again, the cat will too."
*she lost her father while writing one of the books which inspired some of the character's feelings, and then she made a joke about how she didn't really lose him, he died. she loses a lot of things, but misplacing a parent is something even she couldn't do.
*she was an exotic dancer in college because she needed the money. before every book signing she hopes not to see anyone from that audience in this one.
*in the final book, she wanted to punish all of the happy couples because "there is nothing more boring than a good relationship."

anyway, let me know if you've read the books, and whenever i get a chance to start them i'll let you know if you should.

*I Never Knew You - Jason Mraz

3 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusApril 13, 2012 at 12:39 PM

    hmmm from your bullet points i really don't like her. :| and makes it seem like her books would be very violent. the beginning of the post i imagined something entirely different. now i'm going to have to go google her so i can see which image in my head is the correct one. :D

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  2. anonymous hippopotamusApril 13, 2012 at 12:42 PM

    wait a minute...erin hunter isn't one person??? :S

    http://www.warriorcats.com/warriorshell.html

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  3. lol i thought she was awesome. sometimes a bit inappropriate for her audience maybe, but still awesome. and yeah it's not. she's the main writer of warriors and came up with the name. she has two writing assistants that help her out, but whenever she gives them actual things to write she sends super detailed outlines that are sometimes more than half the length of the manuscript. the new series about dogs under the name has nothing to do with her, though. she doesn't even know the authors working on it.

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