Dragons at the Metcalfe - An excellent outing for three fantasy lovers.

Last week Monique and Debbie and I headed into the city for a day of world building, politics, goblins, magicians and fantasy authors.

We were attending the annual Reader's Advisory seminar, held at the State Library of NSW. The theme - Fantasy!

The morning kicked off with an Author talk of a different kind. We were able to listen to and even converse with America fantasy author Brent Weeks via Skype. Brent was extremely interesting and gave good insight on how to become a fantasy writer. He was very funny and answered a multitude of questions on his work, as well as giving us the down-low on some up and coming fantasy authors including:

George R. R. Martin
Song of Ice & Fire Series

Brandon Sanderson
Co-wrote the latest 'Wheel of Time' addition as Robert Jordan sadly passed away.
Also wrote the 'Mis-born' trilogy which is supposed to be good.

Heaps of other authors mentioned, which I'm sure you will hear about care of Monique later in the year.

The Seminar also included tips on upcoming authors from a specialist fantasy bookstore, as well as a few tips from a YA librarian at Waverly, who suggested one way to get youth interested in a book was to ask them to 'pick a page' in a novel, read it and if they like it they should give it a go. Apparently it works quite well!

The YA Librarian also suggested Margaret Mahy's 'The Changeover' as a must-read for youth (and adults).

We also heard about the upcoming 'trends' (or lack of) in the fantasy realm, with some saying minotaurs will be the next big thing, whilst others are banking on mermaids. In case you didn't realise the current trend is the undead - zombies and vampires specifically!

What do you think might be the next fantastical trend to look out for? I'm going for the Centaur.

To cap off a very informative seminar, the charming and very interesting YA Fantasy author Garth Nix took the stage, telling us about his formative years travelling round the UK in an old...car (he probably told us the make/model but i have no recollection of that) writing and reading in historical settings. Garth was fantastic to listen to and I would love to get him down our way for an author talk.

The seminar gave us a lot of food for thought when recommending fantasy authors to customers as well as fantasy-themed events that could be held in the library. It also included information on how to use Twitter more effectively to talk to authors and bookstores, as well as how ebooks are impacting authors in positive and negative ways. I particularly liked one library's new book club using the Kindle. The library is actually lending out Kindles to book club members like a book and sharing the same book around all the Kindles. A cheap way to get the newest read for your book club. One to think about...

Thanks
Jess