Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn book signing. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng
Hiển thị các bài đăng có nhãn book signing. Hiển thị tất cả bài đăng

Signing recap: #JenniferNiveninPH book signing!

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I am back with a new recap!

The month of May brings Jennifer Niven, author of the tear inducing and heart wrenching All the Bright Places, to Manila for a signing courtesy of National Bookstore.


It never, never, never gets old. I mean that feeling of seeing an author walking straight towards you, all smiles and so excited to spend time and talk about writing books and the stories she'd written. Perfect example: Jennifer Niven. I love how she's so soft spoken, speaks with simple words and just makes so much sense.

As for what she said during the Q&A, check out the rundown below:

If Jennifer was to write a sequel for ATBP, what is in store for Violet Markey?

Violet wanders around New York, and she's going to NYU where she'd hope to go to a long time ago. She wanders around the world after she graduates and she will probably, one day, write a book about Finch. When people ask her what happens to Violet, Jennifer usually tells them what happened to her instead as she feels like she's like Violet in many ways. Violet has all these bright places with her where she will wander to and honor Finch with every day she has.

(At this point we were all starting to feel emotional, and it's only the first question!)

If she was given the chance to change the ending of All The Bright Places, would Jennifer change it? Why or why not?

Jennifer would love to change it and make it the happiest story. She thought about it while she was writing the book, as it is a personal story (for Jennifer) and Jennifer was really torn about just writing a happy ending. But she was writing what she knew in real life and she thought, that at the end of the day, she will write her experience and hopefully it will lead to a lot of happier endings for the people reading the book.

*cue more feelings here*

Was there anything any of the characters could have done to change the end of the novel/the fate of THAT character? Or was it, like Finch said, something that always had a built-in ending?

There's a lot that could have been done. The parents could've given better attention, especially the mother. Classmates could've been more accepting and less judgmental. And ultimately, THAT character could've been more responsible and could've reached out, let people in and asked for help.

*dump more feels*

All The Bright Places shed some light on some mental health issues that are relevant in today's society. How much research went into the novel for it to have such powerful and emotional portrayal of severe depression and was it difficult for Jennifer to take it all in while writing the novel?

Jennifer knows a boy like Finch and seen up close his struggle, everyday, to be seen in the world and to deal with all the things he's dealing with and try to make sense of them. It was what created Finch for her. Beyond that, Jennifer felt like she has this responsibility, as she was writing for Young Adult, to make sure that everything was as accurate as possible by talking to experts and people she knew who were suffering from depression, with suicidal tendencies to make sure that everything read as accurately as possible. At the end of the day, it was mostly knowing that boy and what he went through.

*oops, I accidentally added more feels*

What can readers expect from Jennifer's new book, Holding Up the Universe?

One thing: Fellow book blogger and the admin for @JenniferNivenPH, Jesselle (The Lifelong Bookworm) has a cameo as she is a character in the book. Jennifer was asked if All the Bright Places was a "ten tissue box" like book, and with Holding Up the Universe, it's a "five boxes instead of ten" kind of book. It's a little bit happier and fun for Jennifer to write. It was hard for Jennifer at first to get into Jack and Libby's voices as she (still) lives in the world of Finch and Violet so it was hard for her to make the separation, but once she did she had such a good time writing them and she hopes that it shows on the page. It's a story about learning one's place in the world and seeing others for who they truly are and not who people think they are. Jennifer hopes that readers get "all the feels with a little less tears."

(We calmed down a little on this part.)

 (And then I just had to ask my question.)

As Jennifer's previous books were non-fiction, What made her transition into writing YA stories and how different is it to write for teens instead of adults?

Jennifer started writing non-fiction and then moved to writing novels for adults. She was in the middle of writing the fourth book in a series (for adults) and then in the spring of 2013, her literary agent passed away unexpectedly. Jennifer has been working with him for 15 years and his death turned everything upside down for her. She was feeling burned out because she was writing said series for adults and the last thing on her mind was writing a new project. After her agent died, she was talking to new agents and they were asking what her new project will be and she had to think of one and she kept coming back to the last conversation she had with her agent where he said "Whatever you write next, I want you to write it because you can't imagine writing anything else.". Jennifer felt like she needed to honor that and him and she took time to think about what her next project should be, and what she truly wanted to write. She kept coming back to this boy she loved all those years ago and she loved reading YA and has always wanted to write it so she thought that it was the perfect chance to do it. She talked to her fiance and asked if anyone would want to read that story and if there even is a story there and he said that Jennifer needed to write the book. And so she did.

(Yeah... sorry.)

How different or difficult was it for Jennifer to adapt her own book as a film screenplay?

It was really scary at first for her, especially because it has been a while since she had written a screenplay. (Jennifer went to film school!) The director of the movie told the producers that Jennifer was the only one who could adapt the book. For her, it was intimidating and people actually listened to the director. But it has been a wonderful experience and an interesting one as film doesn't have much space as books do, and they have to cut certain scenes and make certain changes for the film to make the translation and it was tough at first. Jennifer would look at every scene in the book and tell herself no, that they were all really important and has to be in there but if that is the case, the director told her that they will be making a 12 part movie. The readers, for Jennifer, has always been the most important and as long as she can tell the story in a way that honors the readers and their experience of the book, then that is crucial. Very early on in the screenplay process Jennifer asked readers online what scenes they would absolutely love to see (as Jennifer would have to cut some for the movie) so she listened to the fans, seen the fanarts and know all the favorite lines from the book and she made sure they were in the movie as well.

The movie is shooting in the fall and by the end of the summer, everyone will meet Finch.

(Okay, now we're happy!)

What does Jennifer do on her writing break?

Jennifer writes A LOT and she works ALL THE TIME. But of course it is important to have balance and to have time for herself so she would play with friends, her family and she would dance. Jennifer loves dancing and she takes dance classes in a place near her home. She would also go hiking, as she lives in LA and she loves to be outside whenever she can. She would also travel. And she loves to read! She loves binge watching TV series and she's a huge fan of Supernatural. It's a great kind of escape and a way of recharging herself after writing.

(More happiness!)

 (But then Leslie had to ask her question.)

Mental illness is still somewhat of a taboo in our society today. What made her decide that Finch and Violet's story needed to be told?

Jennifer started to feel that it needed to be told because it is something she had went through and has been carrying around for quite some time. But when she really looked back while in the process of writing the story, she felt like when she lost her own Finch in real life, she felt like she wasn't allowed to talk about it because of how he died as it made people very uncomfortable. She kept those feelings in and carried it around for a really long time so in some ways she wrote All the Bright Places because she had to talk about it and ultimately, she wrote it because people need to talk about it. When the book first came out, some adults took issue with it and said the adults were unrealistic and that it wasn't something teens need to be talked about it, and that it is something they need to learn later on in life. Jennifer's problem with that is the teens she hears from, a lot of them, are not being listened to by the adults in their life and they need to talk about it so they'll know that they're not alone and that they are going through things like it or not and people need to be there for each other. Jennifer didn't really know all of these until she was well into the process of writing the book.

(This is so true.)

How was the writing process for Holding Up the Universe different from the writing process for All the Bright Places?

Jennifer has written 9 books including HUTU and every book wants to be written differently so it didn't surprise her that both books had to be written differently as well. It was challenging for her as she mentioned, as she was still in the heads of both Finch and Violet and really stayed in their world since well before the book was written. Breaking free of that for Jack and Libby was a challenge so what she did to help herself was she made playlist for both the characters, which were very distinctive and different for both Jack and Libby. Jennifer usually doesn't write to music if it has words as it distracts her from what she was trying to write but in the case of HUTU, she wrote to words, played Jack's playlist and just write and switch to Libby's. It was a good way for her to drop into the emotion and the voices of the characters which became a fun kind of challenge for her to write the book in that way. She told herself not to think about it too much, that she will just listen to music, write and go where it takes her. One of the fun things writing HUTU for her is that Jennifer kept surprising herself. She would try to do the unexpected and the characters would do the unexpected as well it made the writing a lot of fun to do.

As if it wasn't enough, Jennifer had to give such an emotional message to her readers. And she cried, and we were so teary eyed as well!


Honestly, it was one of the most emotional Q&A we have had and still I wouldn't trade every moment of it. You can feel Jennifer's emotion throughout the whole thing and we just want to hug her!


Nevertheless, it was still a bright place for all of us that we get to spend some time with this amazing lady! I was able to ask her what her favorite quote was, while she was signing my book and you know what she told me? It would be very hard to pick, because as a writer, she loves every word from what she had created.

With that, I leave you with this photo, the highlight of every book signing we attend: #kaiselfie

I practiced so hard to have everyone fit inside the frame but fitting 24 people inside was just impossible. Please say hello to my forehead.


Thank you so much to National Bookstore for bringing in another amazing author for a book signing! Jennifer deserves so much love from her readers and I am so proud of all the Filipino bookworms who showed up today and gave Jennifer so many bright places!


What an amazing day! Share your experience during the #JenniferinNivenPH signing!


Signing recap: #VictoriaAveyardinPH Manila book signing!

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The first (of the many, I'm sure!) book signings this year, Victoria Aveyard dropped by in Cebu and Manila to meet her fans!

Guess what time I slept for this signing? There's always something about book signings that make me lose sleep, and I was particularly looking forward to this one since I've loved Red Queen so much and read it a good half a year before it was published and the prospect of meeting the author made me all the more excited.

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


We immediately got the ball rolling and me and my fellow bloggers started asking questions which Victoria answered as much as she could (complete with Game of Thrones and Harry Potter ranting on the side which was so cute!) so here we go:

My question for her was: Red Queen featured a lot of big betrayals in the story. As far as shocking literary betrayals go, were any that you’ve read inspired those in the Red Queen series? And speaking of the series, is there anything you can share to us about the next book? A clue about the title? Is someone going to die?

A few, obviously Game of Thrones, pretty much everything in that book. *discusses the deaths in Storm of Swords* (I will not put this here because they're spoilers!) Another one are the deaths in Harry Potter, where you take away the mentor and it's story telling 101 in terms of plotting. *discusses more deaths in Lord of the Rings*

As for some details for the 3rd book in the Red Queen series, Victoria can't reveal the title yet since they haven't finalized it. But it starts immediately where Glass Swords leaves off, with the same format. There are a couple of characters in Glass Swords that will be in the 3rd book a lot more. As of current, Victoria is still writing the 3rd book.

Victoria gave some pretty amazing advice too! Check out her thoughts below:

For writing action packed scenes:

First, finish writing your first draft. You can't sell a book unless you've written one. Red Queen was the first book Victoria has ever written and the number one thing to do is write the end at the end. Get there however you can and don't edit yourself too much on the way there because you can get caught up in the quicksand of self-editing as you go. Forge ahead! Writing action sequences are her favorite parts as she finds it easier to write them than kissing. She'd love it if someone can tell her how to write romance/romantic scenes because it's her weakness! If you want to write action scenes, read. See how your favorite authors do it and internalize the language of those scenes and figure out how to communicate those visually.

Is character or plot more important and which one she decides on first?

Victoria picked a third option: world. Red Queen started with a single image of a girl about to be executed but killed her executioner with lightning instead. It's usually the world that comes to her first. She starts on a macro level that gets narrower. Bonus: the first screenplay Victoria has ever written is about a zombie apocalypse that breaks out in the middle of the Old American West. In short: Zombie Western!

For Victoria, character is more important. She's more of a world person but character is what makes a reader stay with the story.

On the Red Queen series having 4 books instead of a trilogy:

Victoria signed for Red Queen originally with three books. She initially thought she can tell the story in three books but while she was writing the third book she realized the ending will either be rushed or garbage so she went to her publisher and requested for a fourth book.  (They want her to do 5 but she said no.)

It's not really extending or stretching the story line, but doing what the story was requiring as she understands it more.

Updates on Red Queen being a movie:

Universal Studios has the film options for the book and Victoria has read several versions of the draft of the screenplay. They've been very inclusive as Victoria have met the producers and Elizabeth Banks who will direct the movie. Victoria doesn't have actors in mind to play in the movie.

Victoria's top 3 favorite fantasy novels:

Lord of the Rings: Her water shed core inspiration. Victoria read it when she was 11 and carried the book around for 2 years until it fell apart.
Harry Potter: JK Rowling is her hero! She started reading when she was 9 and she felt like she went to Hogwarts along with the characters though she never got her letter.
Song of Ice and Fire: The way GRRM twists fantasy tropes but is very clear on there being no antagonists of protagonists. It's all shades of gray morality, and it inspired Red Queen, with characters who are bad that made good choices and good who made bad choices.

Victoria while answering the bloggers' question.


On having a screenplay writing degree, its advantages and if it's easier to write a script than a novel:

She learned all story-telling trick she knows from film school. For Victoria it's a comprehensive and highly internalized way of telling a story. She hates outlining! From film school she learned that pacing is key, you want to get in your scenes as fast as possible and escalation is the name of the game. Every single scene must up the ante and she thinks she has to outdo herself when she writes a sequel. Knowing her audience is very important as her job is to entertain them and she's putting on a show. She prefers whatever one she wasn't working on. :) Screenplays are visceral, 120 pages tops and 1/6 the size of a novel. Good screenplays are poetry! But novels give you a room to paint a picture and describe what things looks like, which you cannot put in screenplays.

 Which scene in both books are most difficult to write:

The quiet scenes are difficult for her to write, the regrouping parts after a battle. The entire middle of Red Queen is difficult because it's a build up and learning the world in the story. There was a lot of self-doubt in it because she didn't know if the book will be published. Another difficult scene to write was one after a character has just died and everyone was really upset.

The inspiration for the names and abilities in the royal houses of Norta:

The names came out of thin air but Victoria wanted to put a Roman spin on them because it fits. Cal's name is from "Calor" which means "heat" in Spanish. Victoria did a lot of Google translations for words like "water" and "ice" and put spins on words. (Osanus sounds like Ocean!) For superpowers, she relied on Wikipedia, especially for background characters and picked from that especially for main characters, their powers should reflect their personality and service the plot.

On writing other stories after the Red Queen series:

Victoria wants to keep writing until the day she dies. But after Red Queen, Victoria will go back to writing scripts, as it's a good palate cleanser and keeps her on her toes when she switches from one medium to another. She also wants to continue writing in the fantasy genre, and maybe get good enough to write historical fiction because the research scares her, which is why she writes fantasy because she can make things up. After Red Queen, Victoria is signed with HarperCollins for 1 more novel, and she's still brainstorming about what she wants it to be.

On Mare and the message she conveys to readers and being a feminist:

Victoria's first job is to entertain people and any theme or moral (lesson) comes in later. Victoria is a feminist and it's just her natural inclination to write about a woman and a story where women are treated equally. For Mare, Victoria just wanted to write a character who she respects, strong, opinionated and complicated. It doesn't necessarily mean Mare is perfect, and Victoria loves her flaws.

The scientific background about the First Divide:

It's something that Victoria will expound more in the books, but it's not completely vital to the story. It's also not something that will affect the main plot (about Mare and the rebellion), but it is a result of nuclear warfare and mutation through radiation a couple of thousand years before the world in the book happened.

On writing a story with mixed genres:

Victoria likes genre mashups! She's a kitchen sink kind of writer and throws in the things she likes in what she writes. For her, it's cool to paint with different brushes and take pieces of the genres she loves and blend them together in her own personal way.

Finally, what else can people expect from Mare in the next books:

Readers can expect more of her emotional journey. Glass Sword is where she wobbles and can fall into a bad place, with her (sort of) anti-hero moments. In the third book, however, Mare will realize that she's not the center of the universe. Mare will realize that the wounds inflicted in her in Red Queen and Glass Sword are always going to be there and she has to move past them. In Red Queen she trusted the wrong people, in Glass Sword she trusts nobody, and in the third book she's learning to trust who she can and trust herself, which to Victoria is the most important thing. She will get back the trust in herself that she lost in Glass Sword here in the third book, but not to the point that it is unhealthy.

-----

Whew. Okay, that was long! I wish I can share my audio recording but it's very, very bad you'll want to tear your ears off. Anyway! I didn't get to take a lot of photos with my blogger friends since we were all busy catching up with each other, but here are some photos!


Of course we were all waiting for the moment when Victoria will sign our books for us. So I was standing there in line, books in hand, and when it was my turn... I didn't know what to say to her. You'd think after attending quite a few signings, I'll know what to say but nope, I got nothing. So I just smiled and said Hi and she's like:

Victoria: You have a good stack here! *points to my ARCs*
Me: Yep, I got ARCs for both Red Queen and Glass Sword
Victoria: Oh yeah, I still have mine too.
Me: ... *runs out of things to say*
Victoria: Oh I hope we get ARCs for the third book! *still signing my books*
Me: !!!!! I hope I get one too!


A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


After that I got my photo taken and the lovely (amazing!) Kate of The Bookaholic Blurbs kindly let me use her Instax so I can take another photo with Victoria. Sorry friend who I had to cut in line for! Victoria was kind enough to sign it as well! I didn't get the chance to have my bookmarks signed though. I was busy trying to find the right timing to have a #kaiselfie. It's a thing we do during book signing events, where we all try to squeeze in in one photo and include the author as well!

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


(Some settle for having their body parts included since they can't squeeze their faces in. I still don't know whose fingers those are. Friends, please tell me!)

Afterwards we headed to the public signing to see how many people there are, and color me surprised, we found out that the number was already running in the thousand! I first saw the number 900 and just before we left, it was more than a thousand! They had to cap it at 1,200 but... wow! Can you imagine an author signing more than a thousand books in one signing?


I'm so happy and proud for my fellow bookworms and book lovers for coming out and supporting Victoria! I know there were a few hiccups during the public signing but you waited just to see Victoria and for that I'm also thankful to you all! I hope you all had fun!

As a bonus, here's a video of Victoria with her message to her Philippine readers:



Again, thank you so much National Bookstore for the chance you've given me and other Pinoy YA book bloggers to meet and talk with Victoria, and congratulations for another successful event and all that you do for the local reading community! People can say what they want but I'm always thankful that we get such amazing authors to come and visit us here.

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


Did you attend the signing? How was it? Did you have fun? Share your experience with me!

See you at the Sarah J Maas signing this weekend!

New Adult Queens: #CTCinPH signing recap

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The year is coming to a close but no rest for the bookish community as this time the New Adult trio of Colleen Hoover, Tarryn Fisher and fellow Filipino Christine Brae captivated the country in this latest book signing event organized by National Bookstore.


Again, don't ask about my sleeping patterns because it was crazy the night before, as always. I have to admit that I've only read a handful of New Adult novels and I was so curious to know how my encounter with the trio will turn out and surprisingly I had a lot of fun!


There were lots of swooning and screaming that happened when all three of them walked in and then we started the Q&A. My question was for all three authors, which was:

You’ve co-written a book, can you share with us what the experience was like and will you consider doing it again? And if you ever want to collaborate with another author, who would it be and why?

Tarryn: It was the easiest thing (with Colleen). We just get along. I feel like we're both low maintenance. We pretend not to be. She pretends that she's annoyed with me but it's not the truth. So it was a really enjoyable experience, we did it for fun and then we thought we'd share it to the readers. I dunno that I can co-author with anyone else. I think she may be it for me.

Colleen: I paid her to say all of that. No, it's true. It really was an easy experience, you know. It wasn't something that we have on deadlines so we just kind of you know, we kind of just send back and forth as we finish our chapters and we don't rush and it's been a lot of fun to work on and we're still working on it and the third one releases in January so, we're hoping in the future to do it again. We had so much fun so why not?

Tarryn: Yeah, we just wanna do one book next time. We had a good series this time but with contract limitations and publishers so, we really would like to do just a novel next time.

Colleen: Oh, if I could co-write? I dunno that I could either. I feel like it's very, very hard to rely on someone. Even when I wrote Maybe Someday and I had to rely on Griffin and we got along really, really well but I feel like I lucked out with Griffin and Tarryn and that does not always happen. I see other authors who co-wrote together who now don't speak, it's that stressful. I wouldn't wanna risk any friendships.

Christine: I don't think I can co-write right now just because my schedule is crazy and I can't go by someone else's schedule. It has to be by my schedule because I don't really have time to do much.

On self-publishing:

For Christine, writing is a lonely process and so is self-publishing. You need to have your own resources and do it all on your own. It's a good experience but it's one that you have to do by yourself.

For Tarryn, self-publishing is kind of bad-ass. People initially told them that they weren't good enough but they just went ahead and did it anyway and it was successful. It's a defiant movement where they got to create their own success. It's what Tarryn loves about self-publishing, doing it on her own and showing people that she could.

For Colleen, self-publishing is a life changer. A lot changed because of it. What's vexing in it is for new authors to get noticed. There are a lot of NA books being released every day and it's hard to break into it these days.

November 9 has the biggest twist since Hopeless. It also releases November 10th. :)

On writing New Adult:

Colleen didn't know what she was writing, she just wrote a book. When she writes she doesn't know what genre it's gonna end up in and leaves it out to her publishers. What's important for her is to write the story she's interested in writing and the characters in it. Genre doesn't matter. Colleen hasn't even heard of NA when she started self-publishing. She thought NA means "Not Applicable". :3

Tarryn was told six months into the release of her book that what she wrote was NA. Tarryn just writes what she wants and determine what the genre is after.

On their writing processes:

Tarryn waits to feel something and just goes with it and a whole book seems to form around those emotions. She tries to set aside a few hours and write every day. Tarryn likes to get in the minds of her characters and live it out, makes it authentic.

Colleen is manic when she writes and lock herself up in a room for several days. She doesn't really have a schedule and she says she's disorganized. Colleen cannot end her writing with a sad or depressing scene because that's how she'll end up feeling until she finishes writing, so she writes until her characters are happy. As her books are mostly sad, she tries to put humor in every once in a while so she can stop writing.

Christine writes whatever it is she's feeling. She reads the end of every book she's written. Christine knows how she wants her books to end and she moves backwards.

On character names:

The names of the characters in Christine's books have meanings. She'd look up names on the internet and what they mean. Every last name has a meaning. She doesn't go by what clicks in a name, every name has to have a meaning for her.

When Tarryn writes, the name just falls in her head. She'll be typing and it just happens. Tarryn never think hard about the names.

The names are the most important part for Colleen, she cannot start a new book until she had a character's name and their personalities. Colleen currently has a severe case of writer's block because she doesn't know the name of her female character so she can't write a story though she has an idea for a book. The name shapes the scenes for her. What's important in NA is to pick a name for a boy that no one else has as you want the guy's name to stand out.

Trivia: Sydney is a filler name for Colleen's book, Maybe Someday.

Carving a niche in the market:

Luck is not enough, for Colleen, it's also timing. Any one thing you can do to stand out from the rest is a combination of working hard and putting everything out there, writing a good story and trying to market it as best as you can (without being annoying) and hoping it sticks.

Tarryn doesn't agree with Colleen, because Colleen is being humble despite being an excellent storyteller. You have to have a combination of believable characters, tell a good story and do it with really strong, beautiful words. The readers respond to that. It is not luck. Developing a style is also important and reading as much as you can then incorporating what you love to your own style.

Try to take a new perspective on something that's been done a million times before. Only you can see the world like you see it, according to Tarryn.

Christine just writes and that's it. She tells the truth.

And probably the most important thing any author has mentioned (courtesy of Colleen Hoover): "I try to make myself happy. I feel like if I can't make myself happy and I'm not happy with the characters in my book then I don't care if it's the New York Times or it sells a lot of copies, it's not gonna matter to me."

And here we go with the photos!

With my lovely blogger friends, because they're awesome:

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


And the tradition continues as I again attempt to take a Kai selfie. See the progression below. I apologize in advance because I have zero skills in photography. :D


Before we took the "perfect" shot, where my face wasn't even shown, in this case:

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on


I tried. But whatever, at least you can see Tarryn, Colleen and Christine there.. somewhere. Up top? I think. :D

Bonus: a video with such heartfelt messages from Colleen, Tarryn and fellow Filipina, Christine!


Again, thank you so much National Book Store for being so amazing and always giving us the opportunity to interact with such great people even for a short while. This event definitely made me want to read more NA books because they had such amazing authors I didn't even know exists. I had a lot of fun talking to my fellow bloggers and sharing such a once in a lifetime experience with such wonderful people. Wow.

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on

How was your signing experience? Share it with me! :)


YA contemporary Heaven, also known as #KMRinPH signing recap!

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Even though I enjoy reading sci-fi and dystopia, sometimes I sit down and just read a good contemporary YA novel and all is right in the world. And the three ladies who graced Manila with their presence more than a week ago just make us want to say: "Ahh, so this is what YA contemporary heaven feels like."

I was unusually in high spirits (though I woke up around 3 am) as I was mainly looking forward to seeing Robyn Schneider, because I love and worship her writing and The Beginning of Everything moved me so much but I got more than what I was expecting. They were a riot! It was one of the longest Q&A's we've had and one filled with so much laughter!


It's been a while since I've been starstruck and made speechless but when all three of them walked towards the stage I was just that and I know I just had this huge grin on my face because they were there sitting in front of me, answering questions fielded by bloggers.

So what has been asked and how were they answered? Read on for some of the most interesting Q&As in the forum.

Is there a genre all three of them would like to explore other than contemporary? 

Katie is most interested in realistic contemporary because the problems she experiences in life are small and interpersonal, plus she's not really fighting the government OR blasting into space. But she is interested in fantasy and magical realism.

Melissa would love to write historical fiction though it's daunting for her because of the amount of research she needs to do. She does love reading fantasy and science fiction though.

Robyn had to clear up that Extraordinary Means is NOT dystopian. Though it is set in an alternate present, with tumblr still existing but a world where the kind of TB (which was medication resistant) in her book exists. That kind of story gave Robyn the appetite to explore "strange currents", like writing contemporary realistic (ish) but also has horror and/or fantasy elements. (Example: Doctor Who or Buffy with real world problems.)

As for tough reads with mixed reviews, Katie experienced it on both her books. Characters who make lots of mistakes are what feels real for her and that's what she's interested in telling stories about, that's what speaks to her. She's not interested in stories about perfect people with perfect lives.

There is a quote in The Beginning of Everything which goes: “Everyone’s life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary – a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.".

Robyn wasn't sure when that moment was for her. She used to think she knew but she didn't, and that was where the book came from, the idea of what her big moment was and then realizing that becoming a doctor, changing what she was studying, working really hard to accomplish it, suddenly felt like not the best idea in hindsight. Her big life changing moment was deciding to finish writing The Beginning of Everything. She stopped writing, said she couldn't do it and threw the book away and a few days later crept back to it. When she decided to pick it back up and see if it can be fixed, Robyn thinks that was her moment. In retrospect, those moments are small every day decisions. You never know what it'll be.

So what drew them to YA?

Katie fell into YA, as she started writing her first book when she was 16 when she was still in high school and she just wanted to write a story about a cute boy and a girl whose her age going through the same things she's going through (with feelings of not being seen and watching a guy from across the room and knowing you're not in his radar at all). What kept her writing YA is that feeling of everything being so important as a teenager. It's a rich ground for telling stories.

It's the same thing with Melissa, because of a friend of hers who is a YA editor and told her to try writing YA. Teenagers, like Katie said, are allowed to feel each huge decisions, are allowed to feel devastated as adults dismiss them saying they're just kids. Some of the most emotional things happen to you when you're a teen. Unlike when you're an adult, then you just have to deal with it. For Melissa, writing that is what's exciting, in a way that writing adults wouldn't work. 

For Robyn, there's an exciting factor in YA. Writing YA gives her an opportunity to write really impactful firsts, and she's obsessed with that. Everybody always remembers their firsts. Like first kiss, when you won't even remember your seventh. Robyn won't even remember the name of some boy she kissed at a party when she was 24, but the first boy she ever kissed, every single book she'll write will secretly about that. (Or not so secretly.) It's a great opportunity to remember what it was like to try to find a part of herself in a book or a song or a line of text. You don't get adults highlighting the books they're reading or writing quotes on their notebook, they read to past time while teenagers needed to find themselves and find answers about who they are in the world, which was so cool for Robyn.

As for their creative process...

Katie's took a very long time as she worked on her first book when she was 16, which didn't get published until she was almost 30. She worked on it and put it aside for two years and work on it for a week and a half which went on for years. It's a patchwork quilt of her experience for 10 years.

Once Melissa has the initial idea, she outlines. For Melissa, it's important to figure out the process that works for a person and then seeing how it's most fruitful. Melissa doesn't like to sit down and write for the day if she doesn't know what's going to happen, but other people will want to sit down and discover for themselves.

When Robyn comes up with an idea for a story she also has this tiny spark of what could happen and she figures out who it happens to. It's not just the one character. You're not who you are without an input from your best friend or boyfriend or sister. Just figuring out who the character is isn't enough, she has to build a world for that character. A lot of the time it's trial and error but oftentimes she pulls from her own life or start asking her friends about a certain theme. She gathers her materials and just fill in the fine lines of her characters and once she knows what she's working with she writes the story. It's usually a little different than what she initially thought because people are different than they are when she first meets them and it's also true for book characters.

Do any of the guys in their books come from any place in particular? Movie stars? Partners? Past partners?

The guys in Robyn's books are portraits of herself. The girls she writes she has no idea where they came from but the guys would be her if she was a guy. Ezra is very much like her when she was in high school and Lane was like her when she was in college. (And Robyn goes "Oh, this is how I am. What's going on? Why is my psyche coming out fictionally male?" and we all loved her again.)

A character in Melissa's book, The Break-Up Bible, was based on an ex-boyfriend. A friend read it and said it was based on Melissa's ex-boyfriend Andy, but was actually based on a guy named Steve, which was another ex-boyfriend of hers. People will attribute names to their book's characters whether an author choose to do that, people assume that they did.

In Katie's case, she wasn't sure if any of the boys in her books were based in real life, but she met her husband when she was in high school (they're together for 15 years!) and she feels that portraying the experience of falling in love in her books and what it feels like was based on her own life.

Their favorite parts in writing contemporary romance?

Melissa loves writing kissing scenes, the 'I saw him across a crowded room' scenes. Katie also loves to write kissing scenes, but for her it's also about figuring out how to feel about things in the world. Writing contemporary helps Katie understand the world. Robyn loved writing pop culture references and fandom moments! (And then Robyn goes on about how her life is exactly like Seth Cohen from The OC and laments the fact that she's not cool.) Robyn thinks it's fun writing nerdy pop culture references.

What two important things has Katie learned while writing contemporary romance?

The first thing Katie learned goes back to writing complicated characters, the idea of writing a character that people weren't going to like was scary. The idea of putting a character in the world feels like having a child, having spent so much time creating them and people aren't crazy about them. What she learned was all she can do was write a book that she'd want to read. The other thing was? You can never have too many make-out scenes.

(Katie's next book is coming out next spring, still without a title. It's a tragic romance! It takes place in the 1990's in Orlando, Florida about two young not quite famous popstars with a star cross romance!)

And for my question, which was asking Robyn what it was like to write in a male perspective and what the experience was like to write Ezra and then Lane. (I insisted that she had answered it at some point, but Robyn said 'That has not been asked yet!'.)

Robyn prefers writing from a male perspective (she doesn't know what it says about her but she just does!) because she knows the character is not her. It's like writing fantasy. She tries to make the story not too close to home because it's not her, it's somebody else. Ezra is so much easier for her to write as she's really drawn to his brokenness, she understood the story in a really deep way. It was harder to relate to Lane (as of course she's not dying of tuberculosis) but she very much understood his personality as Lane is like a version of herself that she's horrified to turn around one day and find out that she had become, she wanted to write through that.

When Robyn wrote The Begininng of Everything she was writing it for herself. She didn't have a book deal and she was just a student. It was what she did because a boy broke her heart and she was sitting in a coffee shop all summer. Extraordinary Means is what she wrote for her publisher, for her fans and it's a lot harder to do. It's harder to write from a teenage perspective than it is to switch gender. (And then she had to ask why no one was asking her how hard it was to write a character who's 15 years younger than ask how hard it was to write a character without boobs. :D) Robyn likes the double challenge it presents.

If they were to write a book about their lives, what would its title be and why?

Melissa's would be "Don't Press Send", because she spent a good part of her life wishing she hadn't sent some of what she had written via e-mail.

For Katie it would be "Places I Have Fallen Down and Injured Myself". As she is very clumsy and not in a charming, romantic comedy way but in an 'I'll fall down the stairs on a subway station and break my arm' kind of way. A chapter would be dedicated to an injury she got.

For Robyn, it's The Beginning of Everything, because it's pretty much an autobiography to her teenage years. She doesn't want to write a book about her life, but many small books in a two year period about her life, which was what she's trying to do right now with her books. But if she had to give a title to her book it would be "#ihatehashtags". She herself was so baffled by how internet savvy she is but how angry internet culture makes her.

You can listen to the full audio here.

Highlights of the signing:

I tried doing this thing I call "#kaiselfie" (because I'm very creative and can't think of a better name for it) where I take a selfie during each blogger forum and see how many people I can fit in, and see if it won't be blurry or if any one of my blogger friends had funny facial expressions when I take photos. But! For this edition, we had a record of 18 people and one very sneaky author who I didn't realize was there until they were about to leave.

Robyn: I hope I got in on your selfie! *waves*
Me: Wait, what? *checks photo* OMG she's here!

Which is the photo you'll see below:


We almost got Melissa Kantor in the frame as well, but she got lost in the sea of eager bloggers when I took the second trial shot. I'll get better next time. Haha!

I also have an ARC of #TBoE with the original title (still called "Severed Heads, Broken Hearts") and cover and Robyn signed it for me, bless her. She was so fascinated when she saw I had marked some passages and she keeps on saying "Wow, I wrote this sentence!", sounding so giddy every time she takes a peek. Aww.

A photo posted by Kai A. (@amaterasureads) on

Once again, thank you to National Bookstore for this great opportunity to meet such wonderful authors. I got a birthday greeting from Katie Cotugno and got to talk to Melissa Kantor who was so nice and got to take a couple of photos with Robyn Schneider and just chat with her for as long as we could. Wow.


Group photo with the #PHYaBookBloggers and three lovely authors!

And a bonus video of Katie, Melissa and Robyn giving a message to their Philippine readers. Sorry if it's shaky.


And for the giveaway!

WIN A SIGNED ARC OF MELISSA KANTOR'S BETTER THAN PERFECT + SIGNED BOOKMARKS! (PH ONLY)


I have an ARC of Better Than Perfect lying around and had Melissa sign it to give away. I also had 2 bookmarks signed by all three authors and I'll be giving them away as well.

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Leigh Bardugo in PH signing recap! #LeighBardugoinPH

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And National Bookstore woke up the book blogger in me (who was on hiatus) with this signing. Meeting Leigh Bardugo has officially kick started the 2nd half of my year with a very big bang. All I can say is? Again, wow.

As you all know, I still couldn't sleep the night before and coupled with exhaustion from being at Toycon 2015 on Saturday, I summoned what little energy I had left to attend and IT WAS WELL WORTH IT. Leigh was such a darling!


I've actually read Shadow & Bone a solid year right after it was released, so whatever hype there was has pretty much died down by then, and the second book was just released. And yet I was pretty sure I was hit with the same impact other readers got when they've read it the year before I did, so meeting Leigh was something I was looking forward to because I really loved Shadow & Bone. The bloggers started asking questions, but not before Leigh tried to tell us which Filipino words and phrases she had learned over the course of her visit here. Yep, she managed to say "Magandang hapon" and "Salamat" just right. :)

As for the Q&A, here's a rundown:

- Asked which amplifier she'd like to have and why, Leigh immediately said no, because she'd have to kill an animal, which was incidentally one of the hardest scenes for her to write. But if she really had to, she'd choose the third amplifier, the Firebird. (If you've read Ruin & Rising you know why.)

- If she were to collaborate with an author, she'd like to co-write with Laini Taylor though their writing process differs. Leigh likes to outline and Laini writes, re-reads what she writes and goes back to it. She'd also love to write with JK Rowling, but she'll probably just watch her write.

- Aside from writing high fantasy stories, Leigh has a horror story written in the anthology Slasher Girls & Monster Boys, whose cover is one of her favorites because it's so creepy. She has also written a contemporary story included in Stephanie Perkins' anthology Summer Days, Summer Nights, set in a small town in New England with a fantastical element to it.

- Leigh will NEVER cut a steamy scene. She writes following an outline so she rarely cuts a scene. Her books tend to get longer on revision though because of gaps that had to be filled in. Some events that were supposed to be in Siege & Storm were included in the middle of Ruin & Rising. Leigh dreams of having a secret fanfiction account and just write secret, sexy fanfics of her characters.

-  Leigh is a huge Game of Thrones fan and most of what she'd read growing up used Medieval England as a setting and so with Russia she wanted to take her readers someplace different. As for why it's in the 1800s is because Leigh wants to show the tension between the rise of modern military technology and magic. As for choosing to write in the same world as the Grisha, Leigh knew she had a story to tell set in Kerch so she did.

- Six of Crows was different for Leigh because the setting existed fully in her mind before she started writing the story. It's different than Shadow & Bone in a sense that it has 5 POVs, flashbacks, a heist, a prison break, and 6 kids trying to pull off a suicide mission. Shadow & Bone is a classic "chosen one" story, whereas the kids Six of Crows do not have grand destinies, not chosen ones, not Kings or Queens, and they'll never be. They aren't looking to start a revolution, they just want to survive.

- Louisse asked Leigh to create a haiku for Six of Crows, which was:

Six deadly outcasts, 
One impossible heist, yeah!
You should order it.

- To clear things off, Leigh MIGHT write a book for Sturmhond but it won't happen for a few years since she's writing the sequel for Six of Crows and she will then take a break from the Grisha world. But Leigh already knows how his story will go and who he's gonna end up with. As for why Sturmhond? There was so much darkness in the book and here was this guy with confidence and optimism compared to other characters who was just keeping Leigh company. She loved writing about him.

- As for the inspiration for the Grishaverse, it was when Leigh was working as a make-up artist and had to do free make-up for three straight hours while a Halloween party was happening. She was so mad after that she stayed home after, read a book, fell asleep and was greeted with total darkness when she woke up. So after freaking out, turning on every light in the house and checking everywhere, Leigh realized that no matter how old you get or how smart a person was, the fear of the dark never goes away. And she thought what if Darkness was a place? What if the creatures you imagined in the dark were real and you had to fight them in your own territory? What would the place and creatures look like? What kind of magic would you use to fight them and why go there? That inspired the Shadowfold and every idea in the series sprang from that moment.

- Did she mean for the Darkling to be mean and sexy? Yes. Because the most dangerous people in our lives don't walk in with a sign that says "Hey I'm evil, ignore me.". They walk in being beautiful and brooding and charismatic and they know how to manipulate you. The challenge for Leigh was to make the readers to judge the Darkling not for what he says or how compelling he is but by what he actually does. If Leigh had read her books when she was younger she would have shipped The Darkling and Alina too, but alas, that is what fanfiction is for.

- And yes, The Darkling IS a MAIN love interest. One can be a love interest and an antagonist at the same time.

- A notable line from Leigh: "I don't set out to write love interests, I set out to write characters."

- Somewhere down the line, Leigh might write a novella about Alina's origins as there are a lot of threads in the story that can be expanded. This will probably happen after she has written Sturmhond's book.

- Did Leigh created her own languages for Shadow & Bone? Nope. She creates languages to suit the moment of the world, unlike Tolkien who happens to be a linguist and really created his own languages. Ravka takes its cue from Tsarist Russia, Kerch takes its cue from the Dutch Republic of the 1700s and Fjerdan is Scandinavian.

- Life has changed so much for Leigh since Shadow & Bone. 4 years ago, she was broke. She had a job she didn't like, a career she didn't want to be in and now she has her dream job she had dreamed when she was a kid. A friend of hers drew a picture of Leigh in a book signing for her 14th birthday (she still has it) and now she gets to travel to countries she's never been before, meet people and talk about her stories. It is the most unreal, magical, incredible thing.

Leigh might have teared up a little bit in the end, which was a first for us, and we were all just so happy for her.

Watch a video of Leigh sharing a short message to her readers:


And I am sharing a few photos with my blogger friends since it has been too long since we last saw each other and of course we just had to catch up and bond over out massive mutual love for books.


Also known as #kaiselfie where I try to take a photo with as much people squeezed in the frame. Count: 16 people.

The result: this one.



Whew. And now showing the actual signing. We got ARCs of Six of Crows just as Leigh was signing our trilogies and believe me when I said we all fawned over our copies.



A group shot where I, for the first time, wasn't there. I had to leave early since it's Father's Day and I had to go have lunch with my family.


GIVEAWAY TIME!
WIN A SIGNED COPY OF SHADOW AND BONE!

I made a last minute decision and grabbed a paperback copy of Shadow & Bone and had it signed for a giveaway. Hazel and I were actually paying for our copies at the cashier when Leigh arrived and we had to run to our seats to grab our phones and start taking photos / recording.

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E. Lockhart in PH signing recap!

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I can finally say I have met the author of one of the very few books which managed to make me speechless for a good minute before I realized my heart was breaking. E Lockhart, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and other amazing books such as the Ruby Oliver series, was here in Manila for a book signing this weekend and IT WAS SUCH A BLAST MEETING HER!


I was wide awake until 3:30 am the day of the signing, mainly because of a bad case of nerves. Come on, it's E. Lockhart. Some few months ago I was nursing one of the worst book hangovers of my reading life because of We Were Liars and then I'm finally meeting her face to face.

Ladies and gentlemen, E. Lockhart in the flesh.

The moment Emily sat there and spoke after the first question was asked, I know we're all going to be in for a treat. If you're going to listen to the recording below, it's obvious how there are always a couple of seconds of dead air because we're all eagerly waiting for her answers and Emily takes time to think of her answers, but once she speaks the words just flow out of her and we just sit there listen to her. Very surreal experience, dear readers.

I got the opportunity to ask her a question which was:

In writing We Were Liars, how hard was it to tackle a story with an unreliable narrator (in Cadence) and still be purposely vague. What are some of the difficulties you encountered while writing and what kind of considerations did you have to make to piece the story together?

E. Lockhart: I guess two things. For the first time with We Were Liars, I used a different word processor. I used one called Scrivener, which a lot of writers now have been using for a long time and it's often used by writers who are writing big multi book fantasy series that have huge arcs and a million characters to keep track of. What Scrivener allows you to do that Microsoft Word does not is see the structure of your book from a bird's eye. It's hard to explain but if you think of it that way, you can see it from above and you can move the pieces around, and then look at it again. And so because if this is an amnesia story, I really needed to think through where the pieces in the book were in the way that I hadn't needed to another novel, so I used that software.

And the other thing I did was I shared the book with a lot more colleagues than I usually do. So usually I'm fairly confident in what I've written as, you know, telling the story that I want to tell. But with We Were Liars I was not so confident because I didn't know when people will begin to suspect what, whether they would have this sort of misleading suspicions that I wanted them to have, whether they would actually figure it all out, and so I gave the book to a lot of my writer colleagues. I gave it to Scott Westerfeld and Robin Wasserman and I gave it to Sarah Mlyknowski and I gave it to Lauren Myracle. I gave it to all these people I know and now I owe favors to. (And they're making me pay them back!) And they gave me reads on it and one of the best reads I got was from Robin Wasserman who's a really great YA novelist and she was like "Oh! I know everything that's going on by page 10.". And I was like "You're right!". So she obviously could tell that I did not want that to be the case, so she gave me an edit that allowed me and said "here is where you're tipping your hand", "here is where your misleading is going to far and I don't believe you" and she gave a lot of comments like that which helped me revise well.

A run down of the forum Q&A:

- When asked which book of hers is her favorite, she said it's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. The pranks took her forever to figure out as she had to read the history of college pranks and high school pranks, and how to prank. (Thank you, internet!) She would have sections on the book that says "Prank goes here, it is brilliant!". She was very pleased for creating a character that is smarter than hers.
- Each book she has written has a structural device that is a challenge for her.
- Will she write books with fairy tales in it? Nope, because Emily has just finished a draft of a new book, but she had set herself another structural challenge because that is what keeps writing fresh for her.
- No publishing date for the book yet because they're changing from two season to a three season structure. Her due date suddenly became a weird deadline.
- If there is one thing she can change in We Were Liars? Nope, not the dogs. To tell the truth, Emily did not re-read We Were Liars, because she's writing a new book. She made the best book she knew how to make, and then she stopped thinking about it. She can rewrite things and add scenes and tinker with her writing but she's not thinking about it, she's thinking about the things she needs to change in her new book.
- We Were Liars had a style of writing which was like "going out of a limb" for Emily. She was ready for people to read the book and say "this is the most pretentious book I've ever read", for people to dislike the style and dislike the character because of the style.
- We Were Liars was first an idea for a book about "real estate".
- The plot for We Were Liars was written in 10 minutes, before Emily picked up her daughter.
- "Sexy things and bad things, put them in your book and then they will be fine." (This is according to Emily. :D )
- If she can write something not quite Young Adult, what would it be? Con Artists.
- Her next book is not set in high school and has a little bit of murder. About international jet setting 19 year olds.
- If there was a reality show about the Sinclairs? It'll be about cooking, a cooking show. Emily would like to know what's going on in their kitchen. "The secrets of the Sinclair family kitchen". Or "The real housewives of the island."
- We Were Liars is really about families fighting over property, grown children fighting over parental love and approval and younger kids hearing older people fight and feeling powerless and angry about the way the grown-ups are conducting themselves.
- Again, for the fairy tale parts in We Were Liars, Emily has this collection of fairy tale books, which her father gave to her mother, and was one of the only things she brought when she and her mom moved, and they move a lot. She would read them when she was little and the fairy tales in WWL came naturally from Emily's memories of reading the books. She was interested in We Were Liars in writing a story in which objects were endowed with a lot of family baggage and meaning. She'd always been using that box of books in her head.
- Is she an emotional writer? She had to push herself in rewrites to put the emotion in the book. She's scared of it and avoids it in the first drafts of a novel, which is true for the comedies and We Were Liars. She would shortchange the scenes where the emotion is the highest and would do it for multiple drafts until she faced the fact that she would actually feel things and write them down.

My two most favorite questions and answers of the forum are:

What advice can you give to aspiring writers who are looking to develop their own writing style?

I was taught to probably write just as you were, which is to erase myself. In scholarly writing, that is what's taught, in journalism, that is what's taught and so I came out of college writing as formally as stiltedly as invisible as a person, as a personality as could be. A breakthrough for me in finding my voice as a storyteller was trying to write like I would talk to a friend. The Ruby Oliver books, the first couple of those were the first Young Adult fiction that I've written and I suddenly realized that the way that you would tell a story to a friend was actually a pretty unusual way of telling a story. It didn't always go chronologically. You're going back and forth through time, the way that you would actually tell a story and you'll fill people in just what you need to fill in and I realized "Oh, that- you know I didn't need to think that everything should be in perfect order and that I didn't need to be invisible". I can just try to talk on the page.

If you were Cadence and you had a choice, would you let them go?

I think I would, because you cannot stay on an island forever. You have to go back to the rest of the world. You can't, you have to go back to the world.

You can listen to the whole thing here, as Emily said a whole lot more and it was one of the longest forums I've attended but TOTALLY WORTH EVERY SECOND.


Afterwards, we got in line and had our books signed and Emily brought out her stamps! We, of course, had fun talking to her a little bit more (she said sorry about the "pain" in We Were Liars) while she was signing our books! She also signed our shirts. :) And as per usual, I had fun taking photos of my book blogger friends!


I am just so happy to meet E. Lockhart and talk to her about her books and convey my feelings for her works. It was such a surreal experience! I have no other word to describe it! She was as awesome as I thought she'd be.


Also met a fellow book blogger / booktuber Kevin (@tomebound, I'm sure you know him, he's on Instagram too!) at the public signing and got to talk to him about books and Insurgent. So nice meeting you again, Kevin!


And here's a picture of us bloggers with the fabulous and amazing E. Lockhart!


I cannot thank National Bookstore enough for this opportunity to meet Emily! Thanks for another unforgettable experience and for meeting such a wonderful author. Wow.

And as a bonus, here's Emily's short message for the bloggers who attended the forum. Emily took the time to read our blogs before the forum and her message just made me so proud to be a Filipino Young Adult book blogger.


Were you there at the signing? Share your experience with me!

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