NYCC Recap: Book signings! Sam Sykes! Black Widow’s Margaret Stohl! Star Wars’ Alexandra Bracken!

New York Comic Con has always had a strong book presence since the major publishing houses are headquartered a few block away. Lots of authors were around to promote movie ad adaptions of their works or TV adaptions of their books, or just, new books!

Since this is comic con, the publishers tend to bring a lot of their genre authors. Some of the biggest names included Stephanie Meyer (celebrating the anniversary of Twilight) and RL Stine who came to talk books and to support the new Goosebumps movie.

In the exhibit hall, the major publishers had giveaways and author signings. Alas, I don’t think I won this Gail Carriger prize to celebrate the release of her final book in the Finishing School series, Manners & Mutiny!

I got to meet Sam Sykes, author of The City Stained Red which is the first book in a new trilogy set in the same world as his Aeons’ Gate series.

Side story: Sam wandered around artist alley at SDCC and stopped by my friend Jeff Moy’s booth. He bought some sketchbooks and Outlander stickers for his mom. Too adorable!

I’ve also been reading a lot of YA lately so I was excited to meet Margaret Stohl, best known for co-writing the Caster Chronicles (aka Beautiful Creatures books) and her Icons series. Margaret wrote the first book in Marvel’s new YA books, Black Widow: Forever Red. She was friendly and excited to see all the Black Widow cosplay and also my Black Widow shirt.

By the way, she’s at work on a second Black Widow novel. There’s going to be a lot more Marvel in the YA space since Shannon and Dean Hale (Austenland, The Princess in Black) are working on books for Captain Marvel and Squirrel Girl. Artemis Fowl’s Eoin Colfer is working on a novel for Tony Stark.

I also met Alexandra Bracken who just wrote a Middle Grade novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope called The Princess, The Scoundrel and the Farmboy (such a cute name). She signed my Darkest Minds book and also had chapter samples of her upcoming book Passenger. Passenger mixes time traveling and romance so I am very curious about this one!

Beyond the publishing aisle, books had a huge presence in TV since so many shows are based on books these days. The most high profile were Shadowhunters from ABC Family/Freeform (based on Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments books) and The Shannara Chronicles from MTV (based on Terry Brooks’ Elfstones of Shannara).

Syfy is shifting its programming back towards more science fiction and its three biggest new shows are all based on books. The Expanse (based on the James SA Corey books), The Magicians (from Lev Grossman) and Hunters (based on Whitley Strieber’s Alien Hunter) were all present at the con, though the authors didn’t come. (The fourth major Syfy title is Childhood’s End which is based on the Arthur C. Clarke book, but the show was a no-show at NYCC and Arthur was definitely not in attendance since he’s dead.)

Besides meeting authors and getting book signed, the best thing about the publishers is all the free books including some Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs)! I was lucky enough to score an ARC for The Glass Sword, the eagerly anticipated next book in The Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard. I also spotted the gray wolf to get a copy of Flamecaster, a new book in the Seven Realms world by Cinda Chima. Yeah! I’m really excited about both of these.

At the end of the con, I could barely pack my (heavy!) suitcase since I snagged lots of book and a few extra promos to share!

Yes, I will be having a YA giveaway with a ton of different promos and some signed chapter samples! I am headed to YallFest, the biggest YA book conference, next weekend so look for this giveaway sometime after that.

Stay tuned!

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