John Scalzi Signs My Books

This evening John Scalzi was in town as part of his book tour for The Last Colony up at The Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. As with pretty much every book signing I’ve been to, I had a good time. Scalzi is a very personable kind of guy who manages to come off quite genuine as he tells stories – stories that you don’t necessarily get the sense of being stock stories for the tour. He was very animated as he jumped from many varied subjects – how he met his wife, his first failed book tour, interpretive dance, how he missed much of college (the class part) and the old girlfriend from those days, and some actual talk about his books – pretty much the same sort of thing he blogs about sans politics. I found it interesting at just how much emphasis he puts on the opening lines to his books – I think the Scalzi writes very good opening lines, and have featured the opening line of his books in two of the reviews I’ve done.

As he signed my books we had the usual nice small talk – I mentioned the opening line thing and that I reviewed his books at FBS. He responded with recognition that I’m the Neth Space guy and complimented me on my review style. I like to think that people appreciate what I do and it was reassuring to hear Scalzi compliment me – particularly since he’s written a fair share of reviews since his movie critic days out of college.

Scalzi has rather brief post here about the event (and a more in-depth one here), with a picture. I'm in there....well half of my head and a quarter of my torso is anyway.