King of Scars Tour Recap

It’s been several months since I’ve gone to a book event, so I was beyond excited about going to see Leigh Bardugo on the last stop on her King of Scars tour! I went up to LA with four of the other booksellers I work with and we got there early enough so we could grab some dinner beforehand. We ended up finding a waffle place at the farmer’s market and we of course had some in honor of Nina!

We headed over to the store after dinner so we could get in line for the fan meet-up, which is where we got our Grishaverse passports and some other swag. We then got in an even longer line so we could get our books and a spot in line for the signing. Even though we got there early, there was so many people there already that we were stuck standing in between some aisles of books and didn’t actually get to sit down (or see) Leigh Bardugo and Eric Heisserer (the head writer/showrunner of the new Netflix adaptation) speak.

Since Eric was here, so much of the Q&A portion focused on the upcoming Netflix adaptation! Eric first came across Six of Crows when he was looking for some fun fantasy to read for joy not work. After he devoured the book, he tracked down Leigh on twitter and starting talking with her. Fun fact, he had Crooked Kingdom in his lap on the way to the Oscars! It was decided pretty early on to bring together both sides of the universe for the show. One exciting thing is their commitment to bring more diversity to the cast of Shadow and Bone and behind the scenes in the writer’s room and with directors. Leigh is really excited about the Netlfix adaptation because in her words, tv is the right place for fantasy. This will allow the world to breathe and give the room needed to tell the right story.

Besides the show, Leigh also talked about writing. An audience member brought up the Darkling and Leigh said he’s a mush together of all the villains she had a crush on. She also wanted to play on the trope that if you give a guy dark hair and a nice jawline and he murders a lot of people, he’s “misunderstood.” When asked for writing advice, Leigh says that writing is all about revision. Her first draft sounds just like her, but the individual characters will start to come out in revision. She suggests reading your manuscript out loud so you can hear the cadence of the character and start to think about their education, sense of humor, metaphors, and diction. She also advised that you should work on something else while you’re on submission and looking for an editor as well as be grateful at every stage/milestone. And when asked about a third Six of Crows, she said after she finishes writing the sequels to King of Scars and Ninth House!

After the q&a Leigh was a rockstar and signed books for everyone in the audience. Huge thank you to Leigh Bardugo, Eric Heisserer, the Fierce Reads publicists, and all the employees at the Barnes & Noble—The Grove for a magical event!