Recap: Victoria Aveyard's Book Signing Event in Manila

It has been months since we get to attend to a book signing and talk to our blogger friends again since #CTCinPH book signing event. So imagine our excitement when last February, National Bookstore announced that Victoria Aveyard, author of Red Queen, will visit here in the Philippines for a two day book signing event. YAY! 

Last Sunday, March 6, Victoria arrived almost exactly as the forum was scheduled to begin–which was awesome because we were super excited to meet the person behind the powerful and amazing Red Queen series. 

Read on to know what we learned about Victoria Aveyard, her books, and her writing process during the fun and informative Q&A!

• Victoria Aveyard’s advice to aspiring writers is you need to finish your first draft. Write the end at the end. Don’t edit yourself too much, give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
• It usually the world or an image that comes to her first when writing her books.
• The most important part for her when writing is the characters. She believes that character is what makes a reader stay in the story. So it is very important to create characters that readers could relate to.
• In terms of writing high tension scenes, Victoria says that that was the “easy” part for her, those were her favorite part to write. And romantic scenes were her weakness and she thinks that writing kissing scenes is harder than a long battle sequence. Victoria’s advice for aspiring writers who wanted to write these scenes was to read stuff like that and see how your favorite author do scenes like that and sort of internalize the language of those scenes.
• The quiet scenes are always the hard one for her. Scenes which are sort of regrouping after something bad happened. In Red Queen the entire middle of the book is really very difficult for her. Because a lot of it was build up and lot is learning of the world.
• The first screenplay she ever wrote was a zombie western apocalypse.
• In other news, Universal studios has the film option to Red Queen. Victoria says that she have met all the producer, the director and everything that they wanted is happening right now for the story.
• Her top 3 fantasies: Lord of the rings, which she had the book for two years until the pages fell apart. Harry Potter and Song of Ice and Fire, which had a lot of influence with Red queen.
• She learned all story telling trick she knew from film school. Victoria says that from film, pacing is totally key, you need to get on your scene as much as possible. Knowing your audience is very important. In terms on which one she prefers between Film and Novel she says that she prefers the one which she wasn’t writing at the moment.
• Victoria’s inspirations for her names came out of thin air originally but she wanted to put sort of romance in there. So what she does is she did a lot of Latin translations of words like Air or water. For abilities, she looked for Wikipedia and just sorted out the abilities that she would use in the story that would reflect each characters.
• As far as literary betrayals go, one of the things that inspired her was Game of Thrones. Another one that really hurt for her was Serius Black and Dumbledore deaths. She also said that taking away the mentor or the one you lean to be is one of the storytelling 101.
• In terms of writing, Victoria said that she want to keep writing until the day she died. After Red Queen she probably would do some more screenplays to keep muscles working meaning switching from medium to medium. She also want to continue writing fantasy. After Red Queen, she is signed to one more book to HarperCollins.
• She likes genre mashups. Victoria tag herself as a kitchen sink writer and just write the story she likes.
• More of emotional journey can be expected in Mare’s story in the latter books.
• The scientific background or explanation when Silver and Red split both ways was actually a result of nuclear warfare and mutation a couple of thousand years before this world happen.
• As per Victoria they were still not set on the title of the 3^rd book. A couple of characters who were not in Glass Sword much would probably be in the 3^rd book more.

After the Q&A we lined up to have our books signed and interact with her one-on-one.

Of course we can't pass the opportunity to model Red Queen and Glass Sword in flesh (haha)

JM of Book Freak Revelations, Salve of Cuckoo for Books and Kevin of Tomebound

Victoria was such a cool and nice person, she even let us take a video message for our friend who didn't get to attend to the signing!

With some of our bloggers friends <3 (Photo by Algel of Tea-rrificreads)

Victoria Aveyard with the PH YA Book Bloggers! (Photo by Kate of The Bookaholic Blurbs)

After the event we then went to the Public Signing. The photos below didn't do any justice to the people who went to the event. As per NBS, there were around 1200 and more people who attend the signing, CRAZZZY! I think no one ever expected, not even NBS that there will be so many readers who will attend, I mean they had to cut the line to 1200 and this was just in Manila signing! #PoweofBookLove

To end this recap we just wanted to thank National Book Store for making all these awesome events happen and to Victoria for being such a great person!

Make sure to also check out our recap for Sarah J Mass Book Signing Event here in Manila soon!

(Photo by NBS)

Victoria Aveyard's signing recaps:

Algel of Tea-rrific Reads

Kai of Amaterasureads

Precious of Fragments of Life

Leslie of  Bibliophilekid

Kevin of Tomebound

Salve of Cuckoo for Books

Recap: Leigh Bardugo Book Signing in PH

Almost two weeks ago on June 21st, we had the spectacular time meeting Leigh Bardugo and learning so much about her Shadow and Bone series, as well as her new book set in the Grisha world, Six of Crows. It was once again a pleasure to be invited by National Book Store to the forum where we got to meet the other bloggers again after two months, and of course converse with another of our favorite authors. Read all about this meeting and more below!

• When ask if Leigh had to choose one amplifier, she said that she can’t imagine killing one because she’s a huge animal lover. Although if she really had to, she’ll choose firebird.
• In terms of collaborating with somebody, Leigh would love to write with Laini Taylor because she thinks that Laini’s an amazing writer and like her as a person too. They also have different process, Leigh outline while Laini is very much about writes and then she reads what she writes and then goes back to it and she think they might kill each other because of it (haha). She would love to write with JK Rowling too just to meet her but probably spend the whole time just watching her.

• Aside from high fantasy, Leigh has a horror story coming out, Slasher Girls & Monster Boys and it was one of her favorite covers of all time it is so creepy and weird. Leigh also has a story coming in Stephanie Perkins new anthology which comes out next year the Summer days, Summer nights. She really enjoys writing set in our world with a magical element and she sees herself writing that more in the future.

• Leigh said that she would never cut a steamy scene. She outlines and It’s pretty rare that she cut scene and her books tend to get longer on her vision that there are gaps that has to be filled in. In Siege & Storm there were a bunch of events that original accredit as a battle scene that gotten to be a hundred pages long and the book was getting too long so Leigh took a bunch of the events which she imagine in Siege and Storm and put it in the middle of Ruin & Rising and reconstruct it.

• Leigh has this dream of having a secret fan fiction acct and write secret sexy fan fiction characters.

• Leigh is a huge GOT fans and most of what she grew up on is medieval England which she loves and with that she wanted to do something a little different and take her readers some place a little bit different.  1800s Russia felt like the right thing for her world. She wants to have this tension between the rise of modern technology and magic.

• Writing and conceptualizing Six of Crows has been different for Leigh since the setting was fully existed in Leigh’s mind before she even sat down and writes it while in Shadow and Bone it is basically how the politics work, the magic. Six of Crows also have 5 different POVs, there’s flashbacks, heist, prison break, romance. Shadow & Bone was a classic “chosen one” story where ordinary girl discovers power leads revolution and Leigh wanted to write about people who were not chosen ones which the kids in Six of Crows portrays, they’re not kings or queens, they’re not looking for revolution they just wanted to survive. And Kaz the leader doesn’t have powers he was the toughest, the smartest most brutal kid in the room. She really feels that this is a different process different journey and it was really fun.

• When Louisee asks Leigh to make a haiku, to describe Six of Crows:

“Six deadly outcasts.

One impossible heist, YEAH!

You should order it.”

• After writing Six of Crows Leigh said that she will have to take a little break from the Grisha world. She also said that she MIGHT write a book for Sturmhond but it won’t happen for a few years but she always know what his story is and who’s going to end up with. There was so much darkness in the book that Sturmhond has this confidence and optimism who is basically keeping Leigh company that’s why she loved writing about him.

• As to what inspired Leigh on the Grisha world, it was when she used to be a makeup artist and got invited in a Halloween party and ended up doing make up 3 hrs straight for free. Instead of going out she opted out to stay at home where she was staying and fell asleep, when she woke up it was pitched black, country dark. She was completely terrified and when she calm down, she then realize that no matter how old you get, how smart you are the fear of the dark never really goes away,. And she thought what if darkness is a place, what if you have to fight the creature lurking on it, and all the idea from the trilogy really sprang from that initial moment.

• Leigh intended the Darkling to be appealing and sexy. She always felt the most dangerous people in our lives walk in being beautiful, charismatic and they manipulate you to become attach to them and the challenges on writing Darkling was to keep him hot, and you have to judge him not by what he says or how compelling he is but what he actually  does.  Leigh also said that if she read this book on her younger years she’ll absolutely picks Alina with Darkling together but she believed that’s what fan fiction is for.

• Darkling is a main love interest. One can be a love interest and an antagonist; it’s up to the reader to choose or not to choose. Leigh said that she is definitely a team story and can’t understand how mean people to each other over these fictional characters and just hope that all is Team Book. She doesn’t set out to write love interest but set out to write characters.

• There’s a possibility to write a novella about Alina’s origin but probably post Stormhund book.

• Leigh created languages to suit the moment of the world. She always wanted to be accessible to the reader and there are definitely things she would do differently in Shadow and Bone. Ravka takes its cue from Tsarist Russia, Kerch takes its cue from the Dutch Republic of the 1700s and Fjerdan is Scandinavian analog. In general she tends to take use from existent culture languages to keep things consistent but she also gotten a lot braver on her word buildings.

• Life has really changed for Leigh after the success of the Grisha trilogy. 4 years ago she was broke, had a job she didn’t liked, a career she didn’t want to be in, Leigh sort of gotten lost in the way and now she have the job she dreamed having as a kid. Her friend even drew a picture of her when they were 14 yrs. old for her birthday where she was in a book signing (which she still have) and now she travels to a country she have never been before, sit and talk about stories. Leigh’s life has really been different since becoming a published author and really owes it to all the people who read her books. It is the most unreal, magical, incredible thing for her.

After the Q&A, we lined up to have our books signed and interact with Leigh one-on-one.

Dea and Mary Ann with Leigh Bardugo

Random pictures with other Book Bloggers

We also met new people at the event, Kevin(Tomebound) and 

Salve(Cuckoo for Books). They are vloggers which is so awesome!Hi there Leslie hehe!

Finally, a picture with all the bloggers at the event while holding precious SoC arc :)

As per tradition, we went to the public signing venue after the forum and waited with the rest of her fans for the event to start.

We also gather some facts while we were at the public signing. Here are some of them:

• The paperback of Ruin & Rising will have the Darkling prequel story
• In terms of her characters they arrived fully formed in her mind
• Initially she was going to kill Mal but she fall in love with the character and have to keep them live
• She always knew who was right for Alina
• There’s a little bit of Leigh in every character she made. Alina and her share similar humor, they were both pretty pragmatic about life.
• Alina’s relationship with Mal is inspired by her relationships with her friends.
• In terms of writing, Leigh mostly relays her idea to Joanna Volpe (her agent). Leigh also said that one of the inspirations for Six of Crows was when she was driving around LA and she wanted to re watch ocean’s eleven and suddenly has this idea to write about heist, ocean’s eleven meets game of thrones. As for her writing routine Leigh mostly stay 2-3 mos. on her house, order a lot of take out, until the book is done.
• One of the best things for being an author for Leigh was meeting people you admire for years and for her it was Holly Black.
• She always knew that she wanted to be a writer. One thing she does when she had writer’s block is she put her Bluetooth earphones and talks to herself so people won’t think that she’s insane (hehe)
• Leigh recommend to “read everything, never let anybody make you feel ashamed for loving young adult, whether its fantasy or contemporary” and she says to all the people who asks for her advice about writing is “you don’t have to go to a fancy schools to be a writer. All you have to do is read and write, read everything and love books”

• It was really hard for Leigh to balance her writing and promoting.
• As for the updates about the motion picture for Shadow and Bone(YES there is, yay!) though things are moving Hollywood is slow so Leigh doesn’t want to get the readers hopes up until it is really happening.
• Leigh said that she thinks Jai Courtney (Eric from Divergent) would be great to be the Darkling.
• Leigh Book recommendations are: Tamora pierce, Winners Curse (Marie Rutkoski), Graceling (Kristin Cashore) and also Illuminae (there was a twist in the story and felt like she was punch in the gut and recommended highly by her) which she recently read . As for contemporary, she recommends: I’ll Give You the Sun, Eleanor & Park and her recently read the Dumplin’ (Julie Murphy). 

There were also cos players at the event and some of them won Six of Crows Arcs as well as the early birds!

 I mean look at those outfits, they really deserved it.

Photo from NBS

Leigh Bardugo with her Filipino fans (Manila and Cebu event)

Photo from NBS

Our signed copy of Leigh's books

And yes people, that is a Six of Crows ARCs! How gorgeous *sigh* 

To end this recap, here's a message to everyone in the Philippines who poured Leigh Bardugo all the love and support!

Thank You so much again National Book Store for making all these awesome events happen and to Leigh Bardugo!

PS: We'll be attending the next event, Katie Cotugno, Melissa Kantor and Robyn Schneider book signing tomorrow at Grand Atrium, Shangri-la Plaza. See you there!

Leigh Bardugo's signing recaps:

Kai of Amaterasureads

Precious of Fragments of Life

Maricar of Blackplume

Jeselle of Lifelong Bookworm

Leslie of  Bibliophilekid

Chyna of Lite-rate-ture

Kevin of Tomebound

Salve of Cuckoo for Books

Book Signing Recap: #ELockhartinPH

It has been far too long since we did a recap on the amazing signings we've been to, when in fact a couple of authors have visited Manila for events and whatnot since November (you can check  out the photos here and here). Our reasons have been the same and now that school's out (for most of us), we wanted to share with you the wonderful event that is the book signing tour of E. Lockhart in the Philippines.

The Manila leg of the tour and Q&A/forum with the bloggers were held on the 22nd, which Mary Ann, our friend Jello, and I attended. We arrived about fifteen minutes before the event started to chat a little bit and take pictures with some blogger friends.

Emily arrived almost exactly as the forum was scheduled to begin–which was awesome because we were super excited to meet the person behind the powerful and heart-wrenching but totally amazing We Were Liars. The entire Q&A session was very insightful and you can tell that she gives the questions a lot of thought before answering them. Read on to know what we learned about E. Lockhart, her books, and her writing process during the fun and informative Q&A!

• Emily Lockhart said that in all her books, her favorite is “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks ” because the character of Frankie is in lots of way better than her.

• There are elements of fairy tale in WWL, would you consider writing another book with this kind of format? Emily like to experiment with formats, and each of the subsequent books in the series of boyfriend list has some kind of instructional device that was a challenge for her. She also said that she always set herself some kind of structural challenge because that’s kind what keeps her writing.

• In we were liars how hard was it to tackle with unreliable narrator, what are some difficulties you encounter while writing and what kind of considerations did you make? Emily said that for the first time in WWL. she used different word processor. She the used one called Scrivener which was often used by people who were writing big multi-book fantasy series and because the book poses an amnesia story she had to know where the pieces of the book were. The other thing she did was to share the book with her writing colleagues. Emily also said that she was usually fairly confident in what she have written but with we were liars she was not so confident because she didn't know when people would begin to suspect,  whether they would have misleading suspicions that she want them to have and whether they would actually figure it all out.

• Of all reading your books one can’t help but notice and appreciate your distinctive and beautiful writing style. How did you grow into it and what advice could you give to aspiring writers who are wanted to develop their own writing style? A breakthrough for her in finding her voice as a storyteller was trying to write like she would talk to a friend. She doesn't make sure that everything is perfectly in order and she doesn't have to be invisible, she could just try to talk on the page.

• Who is Emily Lockhart in her younger years? Emily then proceeds to tell us that she went to 2 different HS. The first HS she went to, she was so excited because there was drama and dance and visual arts, though she was completely miserable in this HS. Emily could not get in to any drama productions and she wanted to love these classes which were not fun. In her junior year Emily transferred to a prep school and her parents’ think that these preppies would eat her alive and but she was still the same Emily after going to this school and had friends, boyfriends and got parts in the drama productions. Because she changes schools, had this radically different experience, Emily think it was one of the reasons she keep writing about HS is because she had this radically experiences both culturally and socially.

• If there’s one scene that you could change in we were liars what would that be? Emily said that she actually doesn't re read We Were Liars, she made the best book that she knew she had to make and she stop thinking about it.  Emily also said that she would probably write some new scenes and change something’s but she’s just thinking all the things she’s changing for her next book. 

• How did you come up with the unforgettable twist in WWL? Emily told us that she already had this idea; she had the setting and the family in her mind but could not figure out what the story was. So she went to her 2 YA adult’s editor, Donna and Beverly. She told them about her idea on writing about real estate but both her editors suggest for her to add something in the book. One even said about adding dirty and bad things. Emily then went to this worst coffee shop which is right across from her daughter’s school when she was about to pick her up, where she brainstorm for the book and take the whole plot in 10 mins. Those ideas from her editors were staying in the back of Emily’s head for a long time and finally found a way to put them all together.

• If you could write about something else, something not quite young adult or HS what would it be and why? A con artist which is going to be her next book set in international jet setting with a little bit of murder.

• Which aspects of the family would you like to see exposed in the screen (reality TV show)? Emily said that she kind of like a cooking show, she love their food and she want to know what’s in their food. The Sinclair’s TV Show would be “ The secrets of the Sinclair family kitchen”

• What brought you the idea of writing we were liars? When Emily’s looking an idea for a story, where the universal emotions in this, are because she like to write unusual characters that have an unusual voice and way of thinking. In we were liars one of the things Emily wanted to write about is families fighting over property, grown children fighting over parental love and approval and younger kids hearing people fight and that’s an experience that she had and that she think most young people have had.

• If you were Cadence and if you have a choice would you actually let them go? Emily said that she don’t think Cadence has a choice. Emily also said that she would let them go because you can’t stay on an island forever you have to go back to the rest of the world.

• Your previous books have a comedic element to it compared to WWL, can you tell us the secret on making a suspense novel? Emily said that the truism of mystery writing as opposed to suspense, but in mystery there are 3 or 4 suspects and all of them are lying. If your suspect in a mystery is completely open and telling the truth you figure it out quite quickly that they’re seems to be a suspect, if they’re definitely lying and you just don’t know what’s the lie and what’s the truth then the story is much more interesting. She try to hold that idea in writing WWL even if it’s not really a mystery that all of them would have some truth to them and false to them.

• What inspired you to add these fairy tales stories? E Lockhart parents were divorced when she was very little and she and her mother lived in a communal household. They switch houses quite often. They don’t have furniture and just had a bed or any stuff really. One thing that they moved from house to house was a cardboard box full of beautiful late 90th and early 20th century fairy tale collections and was allowed to look these collections under supervision and with clean hands and her mother would watch her very carefully. Much later she found out that these books had been given by her father to her mother during their courtship, a box of marital baggage and were endowed with memories of the courtship. Emily was interested in WWL in writing a story in which objects were endowed with a lot of family baggage and meaning and the fairy tales came naturally because of these collections.

• How emotional do you get when you’re writing your stories and what challenges have you had that you incorporating the feels into your works? Emily said that she usually have to push herself in rewrites to put emotions into the book because she’s scared of that and she avoid it on her first draft of novel.

After the Q&A, we lined up to have our books signed and interact with her one-on-one. Emily's such a cool and nice person and we truly enjoyed the time that we got to know her. 

Mary Ann and Dea with Emily

Bloggers wearing their awesome We Were Liars shirt

And finally, a picture with all the bloggers at the event. We have no idea what was so funny when the picture on the right was taken. :)

We headed to the public signing and checked out the crowd at the venue after the forum. There, almost three hundred excited fans showed up and were patiently waiting to finally meet E. Lockhart! Check out these pictures from the book signing event below (you can find more here). 

(Photo by NBS)

E. Lockhart's stamps of We Were Liars quotes about kindness and bravery on fans' hands and books.

(Photo by NBS)

E. Lockhart Book Signing Recaps:

Jesselle of The Lifelong Bookworm

Algel of Tea-rrific Reads

Dianne of Oops! I Read A Book Again