I guess by now everyone who visits Eyes of Owls knows, that I love books. And that I am a huge Lucinda Riley fan. On Saturday the 11th of November, both of my loves united to become one of the best days of my life so far. I attended my first ever literature festival. The lit.Love in Munich.
As the name would suggest, lit.Love is a literature festival about romance novels. I stumbled on this event trough Facebook and after seeing that Lucinda Riley would attend, I simply had to go. So I took a six hour bus ride from Graz to Munich and enjoyed a day of books. Seriously, spending an entire day around other book lovers is amazing. I should definitely do that more often.
The festival was actually on two days, Saturday and Sunday, but I could only attend Saturday. There were four to five session every hour, so you had to decide what to do.
lit.Love programme
I started the morning with a talk about book covers. I do love a good book cover, so it was a given for me to listen to this talk. Three employees from Penguin Books talked about deciding on a book cover and the various cover changes a book can go through before deciding on one. It was quite an interesting discussion as for every cover there are people who like it and people who don’t. It was also fascinating to find out how a publisher chooses a book cover at the end.
Talk about book covers.
Afterwards, there was a Q&A session with German author Anne Jacobs. Jacobs writes historical novels, which comes from her love of history. She talked about her books, as well as how she researches for them and how she organises the stories. To be honest, this Q&A was tad boring for me as I have never read a book of hers. She does seem to be a lovely person, though, based on that Q&A and a talk about romance that I attended later on.
lit.Love
After the Q&A came the first highlight for me. A reading of Lucinda Riley’s newest novel of the Seven Sisters series, The Pearl Sister, as well as a little talk with her. Full disclosure, I have not read The Pearl Sister yet, as I am waiting for the paperback to come out (which is supposed to be in April of 2018). Why the paperback? Because it has to fit in with my copies of the rest of the series, of course. I am weird that way. Anyways, back to business. The reading was in German, read by German actress Dennenesch Zoudé. After that reading I can honestly say, I cannot wait to read The Pearl Sister – okay, I was terribly excited before that too. During this little talk, I found out that Lucinda Riley is one of the funniest people I have ever met. And she is really humble as well. Oh, and nice. But more on that later.
Next was a lunch break and after that I attended a talk about the conception of fictional characters with authors Fiona Blum, Susanne Goga, Ulla Scheler and Constanze Wilken. The chemistry between these ladies was great and so the hour seemed to move very quickly. Just like with Anne Jacobs, I have not read any of their books. However, both Constanze Wilken and Susanne Goga have convinced me to try their books, so I have put them on my books-to-buy-list.
Talking fictional characters with Ulla Scheler, Susanne Goga, Fiona Blum and Constanze Wilken.
After that talk, there was another one about the recipe of a good romance novel. This time writers Lilli Beck, Anne Freytag, Anne Jacobs and Emilia Schilling talked about what they do to make their romance novels interesting. I did not like this group as much as the last one, so I actually left early to get a good seat for what came next.
Lilli Beck, Anne Jacobs, Emilia Schilling and Anne Freytag talk about what a good romance novel needs.
And that was a Tea Talk with Lucinda Riley. Again, Lucinda is one of the nicest, humblest and funniest people I have ever met. There is this saying of never meeting your idols or heroes as you will only get disappointed, yet for me it did not happen. Lucinda talked a lot about the Seven Sisters series, how she writes, how her travels inspire her and about the fact that she wants to highlight strong women of the past with her Seven Sisters series. One thing she said stuck with me.
“I do what I love for a living.”
If that isn’t life goals, I don’t know what is. Afterwards was a Meet & Greet, where Lucinda signed books and took pictures with her fans and, of course, I was one of them.
A cup of tea with Lucinda Riley.
Lucinda Riley at the lit.Love.
Lucinda Riley and me.
My signed copy of The Seven Sisters.
All in all, my first literature festival was a huge success and if there is a lit.Love next year as well, then I will definitely go again. Have you ever been to a literature festival? Which one was it and would you recommend it? And what about meeting you (literary) heroes? Let me know in the comments.
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