Crazy Sibling Road Trip Chronicle

A few weeks ago, my siblings and I found out that Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy author whose books we really like, was doing a book signing in the Chicago area. That eventually morphed into this:

Yup. The Sanderson Sojourn 2014, as my sister named it, or as I've been calling it, Crazy Sibling Road Trip. The three of us jumped in the car with some carrots, Oreos, a plush guinea pig, and seven copies of his books (among other miscellaneous things) and headed on down to meet Mr. Sanderson at a Barnes and Noble in Skokie, IL.

It. Was. Awesome.

We got there a little after eleven Chicago time, which left us with just under three hours to grab lunch and await Brandon's arrival. Which wasn't really a problem -- we just settled down with the books we'd brought (well, the books Matt and Ani brought, as I don't actually own any of them myself) and got to reading. Not only is a bookstore a nice place to hang out for an hour or two, a few other Sanderson fans were starting to show up. We started overhearing snippets of conversation going on around us about characters we knew and plotlines we'd followed, which was really cool. I love reading and discussing books, and suddenly I found that my siblings and I were sharing this common link with some complete strangers. In a way, it's hard for me to explain what a neat experience that was. I could go on for a lot longer about how essential stories are to our human experience, but we haven't even met the author yet, so I'll leave that for another post (or, as a friend of mine and fellow Sanderson fan would say, that's a sermon for another soapbox).

By this time, the bookstore people had started setting up chairs for the event, so we joined the growing cluster of fantasy fanatics like ourselves and claimed some seats. There weren't a whole lot of people there yet, so we got to talk with some of the others who were most excited for this. Everyone was really friendly -- I made a comment to my sister across the aisle about a book and other people chimed in. We had several good discussions going until the man himself arrived.

Meeting an author whose stories you love can be a little scary. What if he's nothing like the person his books make him seem to be? What if he's really not interested in his readers? What if he turns out to be a really talented jerk?

It blows all those fears out of the water when he turns out to be fantastic human being. I was extremely impressed with him. Personable, passionate, humble, intelligent, genuine -- in short, he struck me as a really great guy. He had a lot of great things to say about writing and answered quite a few audience questions. His books have shown me how important faith is to him, and I'd love to talk with him about it some time. His talk made it even more clear to me that he loves his work and loves his readers. He also has book signing down to a science, despite the colossal stacks of books some fans (like my siblings) brought. It took us about an hour and a half, give or take (probably give), to get through the line, and there were upwards of a hundred people ahead of us. He signed all of them while talking to us -- and not just small talk, a quick bit of quality conversation about his books -- and pausing for a picture.

And here we are. Matt was very excited to get a question about the cosmere answered (for those interested in and in the know about the Sanderson 'verse, highlight to read the minor spoiler for the Stormlight Archive: he confirmed that Hoid has used Shadesmar to world-hop). That itty-bitty object Brandon's holding is a miniature copy of the book he was touring for, Words of Radiance, that Ani put together. I can only take credit for doing the cover text and getting the art down to size. She also put in the inside cover art in the front and map in the back. Most of the pages inside are blank, except for the first two. Ani wrote in "for Brandon," our names, the date, our hometown, and a quote from the book ("Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination."). He broke into this huge grin when Ani handed it to him, as if the day hadn't already been made for us.

Unfortunately, the day didn't end without a hitch. We stopped for some Chicago-style deep dish pizza before heading back home, and although it was delicious, our car was broken into while we were at the restaurant. We'd taken almost everything of value with us (thanks, God!), but we lost the back window of the car and my brother's bag. Although there wasn't anything in it that was monetarily very valuable, he lost the two books that Brandon had signed for him.

It was a cold drive back along the freeway, but we made it back in one piece, thankful that we were all okay and not much was lost. (However, I'm never parking in downtown Chicago ever again. Two busted windows is more than enough, thank you very much.) Despite the somewhat bitter end to it, it was a fantastic day. I didn't get the chance to ask him my question, since the line had to keep moving, but that's okay. Meeting him was phenomenal, and I'm sure I'll have plenty more to discover about it in his future books. Besides, the Sanderson Sojourn won't end in 2014 -- siblings need some traditions, after all.

More pictures can be found on Facebook.