How I met your moth...ahem...Lara Adrian

Okay so here I am now trying to think of how to start. *ponders* Perhaps the beginning would be best?
I was born 25 years...sorry just kidding. Man I need more coffee. LOL

So on Monday was the BIG day for me. I was so nervous on Sunday and I tell you sleep was  nothing that came easily to me. I lay awake in bed with BF and we told us "important" things about vuvuzelas just so I could pretend that I'm not unable to sleep cuz of meeting an author the next day. But after hours of senseless discussions I found a bit of sleep that night but I was wide awake at 7AM or perhaps a bit earlier. I tried to be cool and took everything real slow but all in all I was late when I had to leave the apartment just to be too early at the train station. Don't ask me how that works but it does with me- go figure. I met another of the lucky winners there and together we took the 2 hour long train ride to Berlin.

We planned to read and listen to music the whole time but in real we sat there and talked about books and books and surprisingly more books. It was so good to finally find someone who shares my love for these novels in real life and luckily our humor fit so no one started to cry.

After the 2 hour book talk we finally arrived in Berlin and met with the third girl in our small fangirl group. We all clicked really fast and I'm so happy I met these 2 girls on twitter. We tried to find the meeting point for the boat trip and started walking. You could see and hear the group we were looking for really fast and everyone was really nice from the start. We got a pretty bag full of goodies with an audiobook(I got Jäger der Nacht (Visions of Heat) by Nalini Singh), the new book Gezeichnete des Schicksals (Shades of Midnight), a pen and the LoveLetter Magazine.

First thing we did was a group picture with Lara Adrian and all the winners from the audible.de giveaway. So that was my fist contact with an author and she knew who i was. *fangirl scream* I said:" Hi, I'm Susi. Nice to meet you." and she asked "Susi_Sunshine from twitter?" Isn't that awesome? I think I love Lara just for that alone. LOL So the photographer (later referred to as the Stalker) made a  million more pictures and the first hors d'oeuvre were served. We made a big picture of all the 20 winners and the team who organized it and directly went to our small little boat to start our 2,5 hours trip on the Spree.

We had a, lets call it enthusiastic tour guide and we could ask Lara everything we want. So as you can imagine that went rather slow at the beginning. Everyone was a bit awed and not many dared to do it. I think most of them didn''t speak much English which made the whole thing more complicated for them. But we tried to ask as much as we could think of. Although you couldn't ask much about the story cuz not many read the new book already cuz it was released in Germany on Monday and went directly to place 3 on the Spiegel Bestseller list. *woot* Congrats for that Lara!!!

Lara's husband John was there too and he was such a sweetheart. He asked which hero we liked most and he nearly made no mistake with naming them all. *g*
Okay here a few things I learned on the boat trip:

- Lara told us that she will write a total of 10 books in the Midnight Breed series and it will end with a big change in her world. After that she plans to write some spin-off books set in this "new" world and her old characters might get a reappearance in those.

- I thought it was really interesting to find out what a plotter Lara is. She spends most of her time plotting the whole book through- she knows what will happen in each chapter and when she is finished with that she starts to write like a maniac. Sometimes more than 16 hours a day. O_o My hands would fall of.

- Lara Adrian is not her real name but Tina St. John isn't either.

- Lara is half German and the last time she was in Berlin she was 7 years old.

- She's been happily married to John for 24 years now and says it feel more like 1 year.

- John helps her plot her books from time to time and there are times when they talk about it at the breakfast table.

So we had a nice chat, drank coffee, tried to ignore the Stalker snapping pictures the whole time and listened to what Lara had to say.

Surely the time was over fast and we drove to the next part of the day- BBQ on a roof-deck of audible.de. That was so awesome. We were welcomed with a bit of sparkling wine and yummy food and got the time to chat a bit more. We also took a tour through the building and it was so interesting to see how they make the audio-books. Fascinating how much work that is and to hear how many ppl are actually involved in this process. I also saw a German actor, Helmut Kraus, who you won't know but everyone here does. He was recording an audio-book at the moment and I was thrilled to see him. He's the neighbor of Peter Lustig in a German tv show for kids and it was a childhood dream come true, kind of. LOL

So after everyone was done with eating Irina von Bentheim, the German voice of Carrie Bradshaw, started a short Q&A with Lara and Simon Jäger who's reading her books in the German Audiobooks. He's also the voice of Josh Hartnett and Heath Ledger. *swoon* I have to say he is rather funny and I had to laugh out loud more than ones. Especially when he was asked how it is to read the more erotic parts of Lara's books. And I swear you could see a small blush. I thought that Mrs. von Bentheim wasn't the best choice to translate what Lara said but luckily I understood everything in English and  I didn't need her translations.

Around 8 PM we started to go to the Quatsch Comedy Club where the actual reading took place. We all took a  seat in this nice little theatre and listened to Lara and Simon reading from Shades of Midnight. Lara's voice was a bit strained but I loved every second of it. Simon is soooo good I tell you. I think I need the German audiobooks just to listen to his voice. Very HOT!! We had to leave relative quick after to get the last train but I will never forget this day.

I wanted to thank audible.de, Egmont-Lyx, LoveLetter Magazin and LovelyBooks who made this day possible. You are the bestest ever.

And tomorrow I will have a small surprise I brought home from the signing so stay tuned. =)