Last night, James Dashner
was kind enough to stop by our local bookstore.
(The lady you see in the pic is our very awesome bookstore rep... who gets all these cool folk to stop by and chat with us)
I have to say,
his books may be bleak,
but he's a pretty funny guy.
Oh, and he *REALLY* wants you to know he's on Twitter.
(LOL... he kept referencing his Twitter account...
evidently it's the place to be for breaking Dashner news)
(his avatar is his new puppy, lol)
He is the author of
The Maze Runner
which is being made into a movie that will come out
in November 2014.
He also recently released a new book
The Eye of Minds
He went on to describe it as an homage to his love of The Matrix and Inception,
(evidently Mr. Dashner is quite the movie lover)
and when I read the inside cover I immediately thought of
Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline
(which is a friggin awesome read, if you haven't read it)
I'll be interested to see how the two compare.
(FYI, James Dashner has *not* read Ready Player One (although he owns a copy)...
so his book was not influenced by the other...
I'm just curious to see how these two books focusing on
virtual reality compare and contrast)
Mostly though, he talked about The Maze Runner series...
saying Minho was his favorite character,
explaining his reasoning behind things like
naming WICKED, the slang the kids use and the Grievers.
He also discussed how his goal was to create a sort of
anti-Lord of the Flies...
where instead of degrading into violence and wickedness,
these boys worked together to survive.
He answered quite a few questions and talked for a good hour
about a multitude of topics (he might be a rambler, hehe).
If he ever happens to be swinging through your neck of the woods,
I highly recommend stopping in to see what he's got to say.
Not related to Mr. Dashner, but I just had to share...
While I waited for the signing to begin, I went over to check out the
YA Used Books section and found this:
All of the Used YA books were gone... and this note was left behind:
HAHAHA!
It's a joke, of course,
they're just rearranging...
but it cracked me up.