I was at Scott Westerfeld’s book signing October 25th at Books & Books in Miami. He’s in tour for the releasing of his new book – Leviathan.

Leviathan is fully illustrated by Keith Thompson. It’s a very unique and detailed work that makes Leviathan one of the top YA Novels available.

Westerfeld gave a full presentation with an image projector, explaining most of the illustrations in his book and why he decided to get it illustrated. The story happens around World War I and at that time all YA books were illustrated. That’s how he decided. Now he believes it will be hard to have any other book without them.

Leviathan is the first book of a Trilogy. However a 4th book will be released with all the detailed images that didn’t fit the story itself.

As all of Scott Westerfeld’s books, his fantasy and fiction ideas runs around biology mutations, high  technology and people jumping from high altitudes (he said this himself!). This book spins some concepts about how a simple tragedy can change the world and how Darwin’s theory can be very fun.

I met Kristin Cashore – author of Graceling and now realeased Fire – October 6th in Miami.
She was at Books & Books in a signing tour.

Fire is a companion  book for Graceling. If you haven’t read Graceling, you can still read Fire.

She read a few pages from Fire, which sounded awesome. She explained about the characters, saying that none of them are based in real people.
She said when it’s about the cover of her books she has zero influence on it, except if she hates something they would tried to change it.
She also showed us her notebook with all her writing for Butterblue, her 3rd book, which is the story that follows Graceling.
Kristin Cashore is sweet and adorable! I loved every minute!

I highly recommend her books, they’re great.