Maybe you remember the big snowstorms that swept the US at the same time that Richelle was on her book tour for Last Sacrifice? Unfortunately it resulted in her having to cancel the Minneapolis signing.
A few brave -and just a little bit crazy (in a good way) - Vampire Academy fans, made it to the Mall of America and decided to have their own signing. In case you missed that, you really need to read Richelle's blog post: The greatest signing I never had. Here's a taste of what you get. I present to you, Fauxchelle:
When the signing was canceled, Richelle promised she'd be back in the spring, when the snow cleared, and that's what's happening tomorrow. Sunday, May 22 is the new date for the signing. So if you're in the neighborhood, make sure you don't miss it. Because, not only will you finally be able to attend Richelle's signing. She has also promised to read from Bloodlines!!! You certainly don't want to miss that! Hopefully, all of us who can't attend this signing will hear all about it afterwards.
For all the details, go to Richelle's blog. Mall of America have also posted additional rules for the signing on their website. You can read about those on ShadowKissed.com.
There were a lot of updates from Arcane Vault yesterday. So many, in fact, that Arcane Vault compiled a recap list of all them on their Facebook page.
These are the announcements from yesterday:
1. Arcane Vault are holding a contest for creating your own book cover. Check out the notes on their Facebook Page to learn about the rules and prizes. :D
2. They are having a Valentin's Day sale. On February 14 and week following, you get a 25% discount when entering FEB25 when asked for a promotion code.
A couple of days ago Richelle tweeted an awesome review of Vampire Academy, and after watching this video you'll all understand why that was something she just had to do. ;-)
This is the amazingly funny video, made by Anna from Anna Reads:
Visit Anna Reads to read what exactly made her create this hilarious video, and to let her know what you think about it! :D
BloodlinesFans alerted us on to the fact that a new, Vampire Academy related, word has been added to the Urban Dictionary. That word is:
Dimkalicious
And the definition of the word is (according to the Urban Dictionary):
Being Dimkalicious or being called it means that you are comparable to Dimitri Belikov, in the way that he is sexy, gorgeous, bad-ass, amazing, "like a god", fierce etc.
He's so Dimkalicious!
Isn't this awesome? I remember the late night Twitter talks that inspired this word, and they were really fun to follow. The credit for inventing the word in the first place goes to Melissa (Minamostaza). Congrats! :-)
As you know, ReelzChannel have posted a series of guest blogs about Vampire Academy, written by different fan sites. The most recent blog is written by Laura from ShadowKissed.net, and she lists her Top 5 Fanmade Vampire Academy Movie Posters.
I'm actually not that familiar with what's out there in the way of fan made movie posters, so I haven't seen a lot of these posters, but out of the five that Laura picked, I'd have to say that this one by theatrebabyy-x is my favorite:
These are Laura's opinions about this particular poster:
Pros: This looks like a real movie poster — and a Vampire Academy one at that. It's captivating, Rose in the middle with Dimitri and Lissa either side of her, with great character-setting poses!
Cons: It's a wonderful fanmade poster, but there's no St Vladimir picture or tagline.
Verdict: Rose's pose is what draws you into this poster; this kind of theme for the posters would go a long way. This poster is ALL over the web as a fan-fave!
I agree with Laura that one con is the fact that there is no St. Vladimir's Academy in the poster, and there definitely should be because, you know, Vampire ACADEMY? And I also love how they've posed the characters. Rose in the middle, of course, since she's the narrator and main character. And seeing as a lot of the plot boils down to Rose trying to juggle her duty to and friendship with Lissa, with her feelings for Dimitri, the way she's placed between them is appropriate.
ReelzChannel have featured Vampire Academy and fan opinions about the possible making of a Vampire Academy movie in several articles in the last couple of months, which of course we love. It's great that more people become aware of how wonderful the books are, but it also increases our chances of seeing a Vampire Academy movie get made.
Stephanie is our resident fan video expert. She's spent hours on Youtube selecting her favorites, and she's introduced me to some of them. However, I'm still a novice. :-) I have a couple of favorites, though, and one of them was featured in the ReelzChannel article. Stephanie also posted it to our blog a while back. You can watch her favorite fan videos by selecting the fan video category in the sidebar.
This is my favorite Vampire Academy trailer, and one of those mentioned in the article. It's made by o0tash0o.
This is how Tina and Sabrina from Lildhampir.com broke down this trailer:
Pros: It does the best job at introducing the Vampire Academy story line.
Cons: It mentions nighttime rituals, which are not in the book.
Final Verdict: If the actual movie introduces the story in an intriguing, Bad A** way like this trailer, then we have a box-office hit!
I absolutely agree with them. I love how it's put together, with the music and the fighting footage especially. But when it comes to the cons, I have to say, that in addition to the trailer mentioning nighttime rituals, it also suggests that the Strigoi are somehow trying to make Lissa into one of them, which seems confusing. Other than that, I think it's a great trailer!
The trailer I think is my favorite, though, isn't a Vampire Academy trailer - it's a trailer for Blood Promise. So watch this ONLY if you've already read Blood Promise! There are HUGE spoilers for Blood Promise, and especially for Shadow Kiss. Because of that, I'm just linking to it:
On Richelle Mead's blog and Arcane Vault's Facebook page, we've seen a lot of examples of things fans have made to express their love of Vampire Academy, but this is definitely one of my favorite things so far!
I am so excited to be able to share this with you! I think this is so incredibly awesome! It may be because I, myself, love to knit, but when I saw what Adriatika posted on her twitter, I jumped on her immediately to ask her for a pattern! :-)
This is what she posted:
They are pictures of a scarf that she knitted, with her own pattern! I'm probably a knitting and/or scarf nerd, but I just love this!
This is the pattern for the symbols:
And this is Adriatika's description of how she went about making the scarf:
Here is the pattern for the Vampire Academy scarf (I used 3 seperate patterns but I put them all together so sorry if it looks mish-mashed together) I used the double knitting technique so the scarf's really thick and warm. I used size 7 U.S. (4.5 mm) needles and about 300 yds (280 m) of worsted weight (4) wool/alpaca yarn (Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller Alpaca Love by in the colors Dusk and Cobblestone if you were wondering), though you can use whatever you want :)
The VA symbol and the Promise mark look the same upside-down and right-side-up, but the molnija mark doesn't, the wider part is the top, so the pattern goes form bottom to top. However, the Molnija mark is the same on front and back, while the VA and Promise marks are backwards so when you're doing the front read right to left and on the back, left to right (I almost ended up with mine saying AV :))
My scarf was 30 stitches wide and I don't know how many rows long, though I do know that I knit 104 plain rows between the pattern, but you can adjust that to make it longer/shorter (I spray blocked my scarf and it got about a foot longer than in the pics). Sorry if I talked too much and my over use of smiley faces, e-mail me or tweet if you have any questions (If you don't know how to double knit I know a great YouTube vid that explains it pretty well, but you've probably been knitting longer than me (3 weeks) and probably know a lot more than I do)
Here's some hints and tips I learned while knitting the scarf :
-To keep track of what row you're on, just put a little x next to the row on the pattern so you don't have to go counting stitches -when you're doing the middle of the scarf, put a stitch marker every 20 rows so you don't have to count 100+ rows :) -after you cast on, you can knit/purl into the same stitch with 2 colors (as in the video), or you can just knit with both colors, but make ABSOLUTE sure that the color pattern stays the same (purple grey purple grey..., or grey purple grey purple...) you don't want 2 stitches of the same color next to each other because it'll mess up your pattern (this way does twist the working yarn a lot, so just be warned) -one color will be your main color, and one will be the color for the symbols (as if that's not already obvious) -when your main color is in the background facing you, you're looking at the right side -when your color for your symbols is in the background facing you, you're looking at the wrong side -read the pattern from the bottom to the top -on the right side, read the pattern from right to left -on the wrong side, read the pattern from left to right -when you start a pattern, make sure you're reading from the right way (I almost ended up with my scarf saying AV instead of VA bc the VA pattern starts on the wrong side and I was reading from right to left) -If a row is exactly the same as the row you just knitted (which happens a lot in the VA and Promise mark and sometimes in the Molnija mark), you can just knit/purl the stitches with the yarn of the same color (if that makes sense, basically it means knit/purl the purple stitches with purple yarn, and knit/purl the grey stitches with grey yarn, or whatever colors you use) -one way to cast off is to just do a normal cast off in knit stitch or rib stitch which will make a pattern like the edges -another way (the better way bc it looks like the cast on row, but I guess it doesn't really matter if you do fringe) is to knit the first stitch only using 1 color (whichever color you did your initial cast on in) then knit 2 together across the whole row until you get to the last stitch which you also knit. you should now have 30 single stitches all the same color Then you can cast off
For those of you who really want to try and make the scarf, but aren't experienced with knitting, Adriatika was kind enough to send us some Youtube videos that can help you with the double knitting technique. I'm definitely going to have to watch this a couple of times to learn how to do it!
Adriatika has posted several pictures of things she's created, inspired by Vampire Academy. You can view them here.
A big thank you to Adriatika for allowing us to share her pattern with you! I know what I'll be doing in the wee hours of the fall/winter (except for rereading Vampire Academy, of course).
All publicly recognizable copy, images, video, etc. are the property of their respective owners. We are simply fans musing the series. No copyright infringement is intended.
The css, main code and graphics were made by us (unless otherwise stated), so please do not copy or steal anything. If you want something, ask first. This page is best viewed in Firefox, 1024x768+.
