Gemina Book Launch + EoS Fangirling

Hi everyone, we hope you’re having a lovely day! In this post, it’ll be me (Luna) covering the Gemina Book Launch in Melbourne and fangirling over an Empire of Storms freebie we recently received in the mail. We hope you enjoy this post!

So firstly, I'm going to talk about how lucky we were to be able to go to the Gemina book launch. When the RSVP tickets for the Gemina Launch were available, we were interstate, and so didn’t check our emails and so forth (how could we enjoy our holidays while on our phones all day?) AND MISSED THE SEATS. 😭😭😭

But to cut a long waiting period short, we joined the wait list and managed to get tickets to the event.

So you can understand how excited we were, considering we thought we couldn’t attend the launch. But upon arrival, I must say that it was quite anti-climatic. There was zero decorations except two lone blue lights at the front. It’s our first ever book launch we’ve been to so I’m not sure if all book launches have many minimalist decorations - to be fair, the event was free, so I can't really complain.

But to the event itself. Amie and Jay only talked for about half an hour, with Adele Walsh as the interviewer. They were all really nice and sweet up there. Saturn’s and my favourite part was the space quiz to name either Jay or Amie the ‘Space Champ’. Some interesting facts I learnt was that the moment I step on Venus without a space suit, I’d explode, choke to death and be squashed flat instantly. I don’t know how that works, but that’s what Adele said.

And, winning by a huge margin, was Jay! I think Amie only won two or so points? But never mind, congratulations to both! So this is the third time seeing Amie and Jay speak (click to read MWF Part 1 & Inky Awards Part 2) and it’s really good to see that they still have the sense of humour and easy-going nature they always have in their talks.

We loved the book wave - it was absolutely amazing to watch. However, since we pre-ordered Gemina, it hasn’t arrived yet, so we couldn’t join in. But it was amazing nonetheless.

However, it might be because I was sitting at the back, but the room itself was very echo-y. It was quite difficult to make out the words most of the time, so we can't design a 'favourite quote' graphic we normally do in our other posts. But moving on, after the short talk was the book signing. All I can say is, it was very long. Saturn and I managed to take a picture with Amie and Jay 😊😊😊, and we can't wait to review Gemina when it arrives.

But we were at the end of the line, so we wandered around a bit beforehand. Lili Wilkinson was at the event and we desperately wanted a photo with her, but we were too nervous to approach her. New fact I learnt: Next time I see an author, I will ask for a photo with them, because Lili left quite early and I couldn’t find a way to say hi.

Another author we saw was Shivaun Plozza. I sort of stared at her for a bit because she looked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t pinpoint a name, but she was SO NICE anyway. She said “Hi” even though she was halfway through a conversation with someone else. [#OzAuthorsAreSoNice]

And just a quick fangirl moment, recently, this little free notebook came because we pre-ordered Empire of Storms. Check out the cover! And also, we’re super excited that Green Valentine AND Illuminae are being shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards! 😍😍