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: Stephanie Perkins' Book Signing Event in Manila

We are always excited whenever an author is invited to visit the Philippines. Meeting them after reading their works used to be a rare thing for people here, and so we're very thankful to everyone (the authors themselves, the publishers, and National Book  Store) who now make one of dreams within our reach.

Last Sunday, we had the amazing, spectacular, wonderful opportunity to get up close and personal with Stephanie Perkins. It was a surreal experience because Anna is an absolute all-time favorite of mine and the three of us have been Stephanie fangirls since it came out. The excitement I felt even the week before it's set to be held was intense. I couldn't sleep the day before and kept imagining that my 15-year old self would have DIED if she knew this will happen 4 years later. 

I know I'm not alone in this sentiment, and that was confirmed when over a thousand PH fans from Cebu and Manila gathered to meet Stephanie and have their books signed by her. One fan in Manila even lined up outside the public signing venue 25 hours before the event. Now THAT is commitment. 

The better part (for me at least) was that we were also lucky enough to ask her questions about Anna, Lola, and Isla, as well as her personal experience while writing them. We learned so much more about this lovely author and her characters during this interview and so I want to share them with you. 

Without further ado, here's the full recap of the Q&A session with Stephanie!

Dea: How have things changed for you as an author since your debut, Anna and the French kiss, came out almost four years ago?

A lot, I hear. That is crazy. I think that the way that my life has changed has been reflective of how the industry has changed. When Anna was published, Contemporary was not that popular and not a big deal, so when I got my contract and went through the publishing system first time, no one was really paying attention. It was expected to be a very quiet book that kinda disappear quickly. It took everyone by surprise, especially me, when people really liked it and kept talking about it and it was all word of mouth; there was no marketing behind it. The marketing budget was being given to Paranormal books at the time. And now, of course with Rainbow Rowell and John Green being two of the biggest names in YA right now, there’s definitely a shift and it is people like me who are reaping the rewards of their hard work so I’m very grateful to them. Coming here was just… I never considered it even in my wildest dreams – that’s not an exaggeration, I never thought this might happen.

Jarrod Perkins

• Stephanie’s biggest inspiration is her husband, Jarrod. They met online when she was 17 and living far away from him. They talked online for about 4 and a half months before their first date, when he flew out to where she was living and took her to senior prom (Just like Cricket did!). She also shared that they wore matching shoes–Chuck Taylors–at the prom, which she then ended up wearing in her wedding as well. (SO SWEET). 

Aside from her own life, she draw inspiration from movies, television, and books. It’s all about trying to recapture a moment and get that on to the page the best that she can.

• When asked of the things she learned about the publishing industry while writing and publishing Isla, Stephanie answered that she learned more about her own process rather than the publishing itself writing Anna, Lola, and Isla. While working on Lola, she started working 18-21 hours a day, and added that the amount of good work she could accomplish diminished very quickly. That was one of the reasons behind the delay between Lola and Isla.

• The hard thing with writing Isla was having a different structure. It wasn't a typical romantic story kind of structure where they like each other for a long duration of the book until they get together at the end. Stephanie shared that Isla is a girl who has always been shy and short on confidence. She has this massive crush on this boy for three years and something happens in this book that actually triggers a relationship to happen unexpectedly between her and her longtime crush. Stephanie gave them Happily Ever After very early on in the story and then she had to take it away, and give it back to them again to make a bigger Happily Ever After at the end.

If she could be Anna, Lola, or Isla, Stephanie would be Lola. Lola is the bravest of the three and it was the quality she struggle with the most. She admire that Lola is an individual who really doesn’t care about much of anything. She’s almost at that point and better now than she was as a teenager. She also quipped that if you were Lola, you are a different person everyday.
For Stephanie, the most important key to creating a realistic and satisfying relationship on the paper is to make the characters work for the Happy Ending before giving it to them. She said it would really be boring to make a story about a perfect relationship of two perfect people with everything always going right. People can’t actually relate to that because we’re making mistakes all the time.
She loves companion novels even as young reader when she discovered Stephen King, who weave in the monsters from his other horror books into his current ones. Stephanie does it as well because it’s a nice treat for readers and she just genuinely love her characters. She spend several years crafting and planning out each novel before writing it. She has a hard time letting them go because, cheesy as it may sound, they feel like friends to her. For that, she sees herself writing many more companion novels in the future.

Photo credit: http://nanowrimo.org

She participated in NaNoWriMo to prove to herself that she can start and finish a project. To this day, she considers it to be one of her greatest personal successes. It was the thing that gave her the confidence to turn a project into a real book. She also shared that Anna, Lola, and Isla all have NaNoWriMo drafts.
She admitted to putting Isla and Josh in Anna with the intention of writing about Josh later on. She didn’t know a lot about Isla when she wrote Anna, so Stephanie kept her quiet in a very minor part to have a few years and think about who she was. However, she knew Josh and what was really going on inside him. To tell a story about this nice, artist boy, she deliberately put Isla in Anna to have the opportunity to write his story and hoped that her publisher would take it.

Stephanie’s Philippine travel is her most surreal one. On the other hand, she also revealed that one of her best travel experiences was the Paris trip she took when she got a book deal for Anna. It was something she couldn't do while writing the book because of financial constraints as a librarian. When she could finally go, she went for a full month. She had a week alone which scared her, but writing Anna’s story made her want to try be braver, and it was very empowering.
When asked if who among her characters were the most likely to walk into the forum, Stephanie answered that the most likely candidates would be Isla and Josh. They are both big readers so it’s probably them that would come there together and keep to themselves because they’re pretty private people. They’d be hanging out in the graphic novel section.

After the Q&A and before the signing starts, Stephanie and NBS surprised all the bloggers with.... ISLA ARC's!! Thank you so much Penguin Teen for providing them!

Gorgeous Isla-inspired nails of Nicole at The Twins Read

The signing part proceeded and we each got to chat a little bit with Stephanie while she signs our books. She's so adorable and sweet. Aaand she complimented us on our outfit. 

Mary Ann and I(Dea) with Stephanie

Stephanie's husband, Jarrod, also joined in the signing/bloggers' photo session and posed with this awesome banner made by Kayla of @SPerkinsPH and The Bookish Owl. It's already a given that Jarrod is a fun and cool person since Stephanie revealed that all three boys from her books has a little Jarrod in them. These pictures just establish those facts firmly.

The Filipino words on the banner translates as Anna and the French Kiss

Jarrod signing the dedication page on Isla

 Some people asked Stephanie  to read the words on the banner out loud but she refused. LOL. She probably thought the "P" word on the banner sounds dirty in Filipino (and it does, a little)

Kayla of @SPerkinsPH's shirt, which Jarrod doodled on with faces of different personalities

And of course, it wouldn't be complete without a group picture!

We then went to Glorietta 1 an hour before the public signing starts. The 600+ people who registered were already waiting when we arrived. A lot of the fans prepared banners and a few even dressed up as their favorite Stephanie Perkins character. 

The crowd was craaazy when Stephanie arrived. I'm always overwhelmed with a sense of pride when I go to public signings. We PH fans sure welcome authors with such enthusiasm, and I love that the authors recognize it too. 

Remember the person I mentioned who lined up 25 hours prior the event? Well, he and six other fans were gifted with Isla ARC for the dedication they showed!

Photo credit: National Book Store on Facebook

I feel like I was on a high that entire day after meeting Stephanie Perkins. For Mary Ann and I, it surely was an achievement-unlocked experience. I'm really hoping she and Jarrod visit us again in the near future!

Lastly, check out Stephanie's sweet message to her fans in the Philippines!

Once again, we'd like to thank National Book Store, Penguin Teen, and Stephanie Perkins for a remarkable event!

Reminder: We are giving away a reader's book of choice and a pre-order book from a list of upcoming YA titles. Isla is one of the books listed so feel free to enter if you haven't. 

Jenny Han Book Signing Event #JennyHaninPH

Last Saturday, June 21st, we were lucky enough to have met the lovely NYT best-selling author Jenny Han in her PH book signing tour that kicked off in Manila. We here at Teen Readers’ Diary have been certified Hanny Badgers since The Summer trilogy came out a few years ago, so you can bet we’ve been counting down the days towards this event!

Mary Ann and I (Dea) arrived at the venue for a Q&A session with Jenny with 30 minutes to spare. What better way to wait for it to start than to catch up with some wonderful PH book bloggers?  

At 10 am, Jenny Han arrived and we were ready to know more about her and her books. We got to ask her one question each and she graciously answered all of them. We learned a lot of cool things about Jenny that ranged from her writing process to love letters and celebrity crushes! 

Read on for the summary of the Q&A.

Dea: If you would be asked to write yourself into any one of your books, which book would you choose and what role would you play?

Jenny said that she would be in The Summer I Turned Pretty because of the beach house. She'd be playing the role of a nanny and will just hang out with the moms while Conrad, Jeremiah and Belly do their thing.

Mary Ann: If you were Lara Jean, who would be your top five celebrity crush that you would write a letter to and who would be Peter Kavinsky for you? 

Jenny answered that one would be Alexander Skarsgard from True Blood, Daryl in The Walking Dead (in a dirty way. LOL) Joel Kinnaman from The Killing, Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones, Jo In Sung, and Seo In Guk. For Peter Kavinsky - the young James Marsden

Other things we learned about Jenny Han:

• Jenny and Siobhan Vivian have been friends since they met in graduate school in David Levithan’s class in New York. They became best friends and then lived in the same neighborhood. When asked of the difference between writing her own novels and collaborating with Siobhan, Jenny said they helped one another by trading pages of each other's work and giving feedback. She shared that they have different strengths;  Siobhan is good at storytelling because of her screenwriting background and she went to film school, while Jenny’s strong suits are more in character and dialogue. The big difference when they are writing books together – they are equally a thousand percent in it because they both had ownership over the story and thus they can both "discipline" it. 
• Siobhan and Jenny did it differently than most collaborations by planning the whole book out. They have a 20-page outline of the story and they divvied it up according to what they’re excited to write about. The three main characters show up in each other's scenes so much that they had to know each character equally well.
• In the first book, they both wrote the characters equally. For Fire with Fire, however, Jenny did most of the Lilia's, Siobhan did most of the Mary's, and they split up Kat in the middle.

• When she was asked if The Summer Trilogy was based on her first love, Jenny said there are pieces that are there. She said that as a writer, it’s one of the best things when she has personally experienced some things. She use those emotions to fuel the story and hopefully make it feel real. 
• She gets asked a lot if she ever considered writing a spin-off for Jeremiah. The answer is no. Jenny said Jeremiah got left in a good place as well. He’s an upbeat guy and he bounces back. One of the key differences between Conrad and Jeremiah is that Conrad is more sensitive and kept it all in him, while Jeremiah is a lot more emotive with his feelings. She doesn't worry about Jeremiah and she’d be more worried about Conrad if things hadn't gone the way things went. She adds that he’d be in a dark place for a while if that happened.

• Jenny also used to write letters to the boys she loved when she’s ready to get over them, but these letters were for her eyes only. For Jenny, writing a love letter is more of a personal experience of you exploring your own emotions and she would have been mortified if any one of the letters she wrote get sent out. Just like in Lara Jean’s case, they were not meant for other people to see. She still has the letters. 
• Jenny has a little sister whom she get closer to as they get older. She’s inspired by her sister as she’s making her stories, and Kitty is most like her.

• In her experience, it’s harder to write stories for young kids. It’s akin to painting on a smaller canvas since you have to be careful having such a small space to express yourself. Writing Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream was the biggest challenge for Jenny and it took her longer to revise and polish it up. 
• Jenny’s usual day involves: waking up mid-morning but staying up late writing. She checks emails and social media, converses with her editor and publicist and then writes for a few hours in the afternoon. If she’s having a minor writer’s block she checks in on Twitter.

•  Her American and Korean heritage inspire her writing very much. As an example, she related the limitations of the MC’s high-functioning alcoholic mother in her first book, Shug, and the limitations of her parents because of the language and cultural barriers. She used a lot of her personal experiences in that story even though it doesn't appear that way on the page. In TATBILB, she’s inspired by the dynamic of big sister and little sister in Korean culture [little sisters always listen to the unnies (big sisters)]
• When she was asked if she meant to have similar plots in Shug and TATBILB, Jenny said that thematically there are certain things that she just really want to write about and there’s always going to be sisters. Almost all of her books have some sort of sister relationship because it is an important piece of her life, and so she will always write about that and first love. 
• Jenny has a nail blog to keep track of what she’s done. You can check it out and follow it here: Just Another Mani Monday
• When asked if she ever felt like running out of story ideas, Jenny said no. She has three other books in the back of her head that she wants to write and have been thinking about over the ten years. She shared that it really is a matter of having all the time to do all the stories she wants to tell so not yet, and hopefully never. 

• Jenny was asked: what makes contemporary novels stand out for you and have you ever thought of branching out to New Adult? Jenny answered that personally, she loves to read Fantasy as well and would love to do one if she has a great idea. For Jenny, the big difference between Fantasy and Contemporary is the world building. She tends to write smaller stories and said it takes a different kind of gift to be able to write those big, world building kind of books. She would love to do it if she got something amazing, and adds that perhaps smaller is more intimate. Emotions and experiences are pretty universal whether you are in contemporary or fantasy. As far as NA goes, she hasn't read a ton of it. She doesn't think she would be branching out to NA anytime soon because her stories tend to be warmhearted and a little innocent. She doesn't know if she’d ever do NA since YA can also be sexy. She also said she doesn't think there need to be a delineation between the two things because a lot of adults read YA, teens read adult, and they all crosses over. 
• Her first book, Shug, is always gonna be special to her as well as the newest book. The middle ones are also special but usually it’s the first and the last.

After the Q&A, Jenny obliged us by giving a message to all her Filipino fans! 

*sorry for the shaky cam! :)

She also signed our books along with the ARC of Ashes to Ashes that Jenny surprised us with (!!!), and posed for pictures with us.

Jenny with her fans over at @jennyhan_ph



Me (left) and Mary Ann (right) with Jenny



PH YA book bloggers with Jenny Han



Selfies!

We then went to National Book Store Glorietta 1, where fans gathered for the public signing at 2 pm. We weren't surprised at all by the big turnout, but hearing that some fans lined up at 11 pm the night before totally did!

Crowd of Hanny Badgers waiting for Jenny Han and the event to start


At 2:30 pm, Jenny was warmly welcomed by hundreds of fans. Check out this very brief video of her entering the venue.

Signed books!

HUGE thanks to National Book Store and Jenny Han for an amazing and fun event! For other recaps, check out these posts from our fellow PH YA bloggers

Kai @ Amaterasu Reads

Precious @ Fragments of Life

Jesselle @ The Lifelong Bookworm

Kazhy @ My Library in the Making