An Evening With Rachel Caine – 4th March 2016

Last week I managed to get a free ticket for Rachel Caine’s book signing in Liverpool Waterstones. Rachel Caine is one of my favourite authors. She has written around fifty books, fifteen of which make up the ‘Morganville Vampires’ series (I own all fifteen and so far I’ve read 9 of them), and her newest release is ‘Midnight Bites‘: an anthology of Morganville short stories which are either exclusive to this book, or have been published online in the past.

Rachel is currently on a ‘Midnight Bites‘ Waterstones tour around the UK, and I’m so happy that I managed to meet her in Liverpool!

The event started with a short talk from Rachel about her past experiences that lead her from writing at the age of fourteen and hiding it from the sight of anyone but her, to attending her first writer’s conference and selling her first book. The way she tells these stories gripped us all and had us all laughing at her “don’t try this at home!” anecdotes.

There was then a Q&A, where people asked her about anything including the typical life of an author and her writing process to whether she’d like to see her stories on the big screen (the answer to this question was along the lines of “Of course I’d love a major film franchise!”). Again, some of her answers had everyone laughing. She’s so naturally entertaining and witty, and such a great speaker.

After the talk everyone moved over to the signing area where Rachel signed books and took photos with everyone. Whilst in the queue, I met three girls and we started talking about books we like and novels that they’re working on. We planned to add each other on Facebook and start a group where we can share books we like and chapters of stories that we’ve written. Meeting new friends is great!

We eventually got to the end of the queue and had our books signed, and everyone got to have a chat with her. In the talk she said that one of her characters, Myrnin, is a Welsh name so she was unsure if she was pronouncing it properly; I told her that I am indeed Welsh, and she was pronouncing it perfectly. She seemed so pleased! (She also told me I have lovely hair. Thank you Rachel. <3)

Me and the wonderful lady that is Rachel Caine!

It was a lovely evening among wonderful people who all seemed genuinely interested in Rachel’s work, and it was great to be surrounded by people who love reading and creative writing as much as I do. I can’t wait for my next book signing, whenever that will be, and I really hope Rachel comes back soon!