The Host Booksigning

I went to the booksigning for Stephenie Meyer's The Host on Tuesday, and Pel, one of the admin from the Twilight Lexicon, asked me to do a write up on it. I figured since people here are fans of the novel as well, I may as well post it here too:

I arrived at the Mall of America at about 1:30PM. They had started selling books at 8AM, and I was told that a handful of people had arrived even earlier than that--as early as 5AM. This is what the line looked like when I first got there:



I bought my copies of The Host. At the start of the line there was a box for submitting questions for Stephenie, which a man walked through the line later on with in case anyone came up with questions as they read The Host.

I sat down to read while I waited for 6PM to come. A note for anyone else who goes so early to wait in line: if possible, bring chairs like the smart people in the photograph! Standing for 4.5 hours or sitting on the floor for that long is not fun!

A glimpse of the room that was slowly but surely filling up with people.

By 3:30PM, that empty half of the room was full of people, and we were asked to get up and squish together to make room for more people. We did so and then all sat back down to wait. Once or twice the Community Relations Manager at the Barnes & Noble at the Mall of America came out to talk to us:



About 15 minutes before Stephenie was due to arrive, he came back out to introduce her. She arrived, and much screaming followed. She told us that she had a presentation planned out, and was going to do a reading, but after finding out that we all would be standing for the entire evening decided against that. Instead, she answered probably 10 or so of the questions from the box.



I caught a few of the questions (and Stephenie's answers!) on camera:
- What inspired The Host?
(video)
- What music was fitting for The Host?
- Why are there blank pages in The Host?
- Will there be sequels for The Host?
(video of the previous 3 questions)
- Do you ever take your kids on tour with you?
(video)
- What characters in The Host did you really enjoy writing?
(video)

Two of the questions were cut off, so here are paraphrased answers:

What inspired The Host?
This answer can be found in a number of articles and I wanted to save space for other questions! One place to find it is at the official The Host website, on the Q&A page.

Will there be sequels for The Host?
Stephenie said that she has outlines for one sequel, and plans for two to make it a trilogy, but doesn't know if she'll write them anytime soon. She mentioned that one reason in particular is that she's grown fond of the characters, and in order for the sequels to be written, characters would need to die and she doesn't want them to.

Another fun thing I'll point out since it's sort of hard to hear in the videos is the 3 songs that Stephenie mentioned are on her The Host playlist:
- Futurism by Muse
- Original of the Species by U2
- My Name is Love by Rob Dickinson

The rest of the playlist will be available on her website once she finishes this leg of the tour and e-mails it to her brother/webmaster.

After the Q&A came the actual book signing, which went very smooth.



I had my books signed by 7:30-8PM or so, and this is what the line looked like after I was finished:



This wasn't even the entire line--it still stretched out down one of the hallways!

I came back for one last peek about quarter to 9 to see how many people were left, and that large central area was still about half full! It was a long night for the workers, fans, and Stephenie!

ETA: I just found a few more videos of the Q&A from the book signing (ones that I didn't film but are on youtube already):
- Did you know you wanted to be an author when you were a child?
- How involved with the Twilight movie were you?