Hello, and
welcome back to My Miraculous Mind. On Monday night I had the experience of
going to the Family Literacy Night at Davis High School. They had many authors
there including B.K. Bostik (the Huber Hill series), Tyler Whitesides (the
Janitors series), and Richard Paul Evans (the Michael Vey series, The Christmas
Box), and several others. We went there and got an opening speech from Richard
Paul Evans which talked about the power of books and how every revolution
started with a book (Common Sense, Mein Kamph, etc). From there we were
dismissed to go to workshops taught by authors. As my mom and I were heading to
a workshop, we saw that we were walking alongside Evans. My mom nudged me and
said, "Go talk to him," and so I went up and said, "Hello, I'm Keaton
Winter and I am an author." Evens shook my hand and asked me where I had
sent my book to which I responded, "Shadow Mountain and Cedar Fort."
He told me good job for sending my book off and said that he hoped to read it
someday. My mother and I went to an Author's Panel and soon decided to move on
to the 15 minute workshop done by Richard Paul Evans. We went there where he
talked about how The Christmas Box came to be and how Michael Vey did so as
well. He also mentioned that his two rejected projects, are his two that hit #1
on the New York Times Bestseller List. So he said that when you get rejected,
don't be sad, say, "Yes!" Obstacles are good, it means that your
project is something big. He said that when you get rejected, it doesn't mean
your book is bad, it means that you have something that is not trending.
Something special. Michael Vey, unbenknowst to many people, is actually very close to Evans' heart. The character is not only based off of his own childhood, having Tourette's and being the kid who sat alone at lunch, but also it is based off of his son (who Vey is acutally named after). Evans' son, Michael, has severe Tourette's and Richard wrote the book to show his son, you are not the odd man out, you are special, you have powers of your own. Richard Paul Evans then announced that he had started
working on a 4th Michael Vey titled "The Hunt For the Jade Dragon".
It takes place in Taiwan and he is going there in about a week to do research.
Then, after the class, he went out one door and we went out another where we
got in line to get Michael Vey 1 and 2 signed. We got in line at 7:40, and we
reached Evans at 9:00. During that time in line my mom and I talked, edited
"Without A Clue . . .", saw a friend and talked with them for a half
hour. But eventually, we made it. As he was signing my book I told him that I
was working on writing a book that I planned on sending off to Mercury (Glenn
Beck's publishing company, and the publisher of the Michael Vey series) and I
told him about how I looked up to Beck. He told me that he had known Glenn long
enough to know that he is a really nice guy but one of the busiest you'll ever
meet. I managed to get a picture with Evans and right as my mom and I were
about to go, he said to me, "You know, you are a remarkable young man."
We shook his hand and left the building where we admired the signature we got
and talked about my books that I have been working on until my dad arrived to
pick us up. All in all it was a great evening even if the line was long. It was
worth the wait to talk to Evans (also, I'm a big Michael Vey fan so of course
it was worth it to get it signed).
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