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Richelle Mead wrapped up her Fan Appreciation Tour last night after visiting three cities voted on by fans in a poll created on the VampireAcademyBooks.com website.
New Orleans placed third in the poll with about 400 votes and hosted their event on Saturday, January 16th at
Octavia Books. Despite the Saints game shutting down most of the city, Octavia had a standing room only crowd of about 75. We were told that more than a few teenagers in the crowd arrived about 3 hours before the event to hold seats in front, some coming from as far away as Austin, TX.
After her New Orleans visit Richelle headed further south to Miami for an event hosted by Books & Books on Sunday, January 17th at the Coral Gables Congregational Church, a beautiful setting for the reading (see photo to the right). A crowd of about 250 showed up for the event! Again t-shirts were raffled off, this time to the people who had traveled the farthest for the event.
Richelle had a fan in town from Brazil who was the lucky winner. The Brazilian fan also brought along a soccer jersey to give to 
Richelle. There was also another fan in the crowd with a real (and very permanent) Molnija tattoo.
A few days prior to Richelle's appearance, a great feature story ran in the Miami Herald on the front page of the Living section. The Miami New Times also covered the visit with an Arts brief that included Richelle's author photo.
Richelle left the warm weather in Miami for a two-day stop in the New York area. On Monday, January 18th she appeared at the Barnes & Noble Tribeca location in front of a crowd of about 125. When Richelle announced she would be reading from Spirit Bound, there were audible gasps heard from the crowd. Again fans arrived wearing their own t-shirts and waited patiently in line for a chance to chat with 
their favorite author.
The last stop on Richelle's Fan Appreciation Tour was at the Borders in Westbury, Long Island. The event manager, noted that fans had arrived at 9 AM to reserve seats! Fans listened intently to Richelle's reading and asked a variety of questions - one fan in particular was thrilled that Sydney, the alchemist from Blood Promise, would be included in the spinoff series. The crowd topped out at about 110 teens and parents. News 12 Long Island had highlighted the event throughout the weekend on air.
Richelle blogged about the entire tour on her website and Twitter.
Here are some more pictures from the tour:
You can see all the pictures in larger sizes on the Penguin Flickr Photostream.
Posted by: Casey McIntyre, Associate Publicist, Penguin Young Readers Group
Richelle Mead Fan Appreciation Tour, Vampire Academy, teenagers, book reading, Penguin, Blood Promise, Spirit Bound
