Meeting Brandon Sanderson at 11:18 on a Rainy Night
Powell’s Books, Beaverton, OR
I didn’t know what to say the night I met my favorite author. Did I ask him a question? Express my admiration? What few words did come to mind sounded either contrived or creepy, and the last thing I wanted was for my writing hero to think I was a stalker, or worse, a fangirl.
I had never seen Powell’s bookstore so full. Never heard the announcement of books being sold out in a single day. I had never met a famous author before.
The most magical part of the night, though, wasn’t getting my photo taken with Brandon Sanderson. It wasn’t even hearing him speak about the beauty and necessity of change, nor to hear him read from the rough draft of his newest project, or answer fan questions, or to see his signature in my copy of Mistborn.
And yes, every part of the above paragraph was wonderful, but what struck me the most about that night were my fellow readers. Five or six hundred of us, I heard one employee muse, filling up the chairs, carrying boxes of books, in character costume, spilling out the back of the bookstore and into the mall — closing in an hour — holding our tickets and wandering the aisles and pulling our favorite books off the shelves, reading on the floor of Young Adults, knitting a blue blanket in Travel Writing. We were all strangers, but we all knew the characters, knew the words, knew the world. We may not ever see each other again, but for one night, we were together in a bookstore, and we understood each other because we had been united by a story.
That night I saw the power of a writer. And it was beautiful.
