Cynthia Hand, Kimberly Derting, and Veronica Rossi
University Bookstore in Mill Creek, Washington is doing a series called Teen Book Brunch where young adult authors come to speak about their books, answer questions, and do a signing. The brunch part is in reference to donuts which are provided and from where I"m standing, all author events should come with free donuts. Donuts make almost every experience more fun, with the possible exception of swimming. I saw Marissa Meyer and Lissa Price at the first Teen Book Brunch and yesterday I had the pleasure of attending their second event, the Spring Into the Future HarperTeen authors tour with Tahereh Mafi (Shatter Me), Kimberly Derting (Body Finder series and The Pledge series), Veronica Rossi (Under the Never Sky) and Cynthia Hand (Unearthly and Hallowed).
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Totally awkward table/chair setup for an author event.
Each author started by introducing themselves and their most recent book. All of the books are part of a series and both Rossi and Mafi have the second installments of their stories coming out in early 2013. Mafi's second book will be titled Unravel Me and Rossi's is called Through the Ever Night. The third Unearthly book, whose title is still an undisclosed mystery, will be out around the same time. The first question members of the audience asked was about the writing process and how long it takes to write a draft and edit the final work. Answers varied but generally it took each of them about four to six months to write a draft and six months to revise. Derting, who is writing two simultaneous series told a story about writing an entire draft in 30 days (!) due to a deadline but it sounds like she wouldn't recommend it, as she followed that up with a story about getting eleven pages of editor's notes on the draft. Derting said her editor's notes were like a sandwich--something nice about her, pages of fixes, and then something nice again. At this point, I was totally grinning because there is an episode of Family Guy where Stewie creates a business (actually a pyramid scheme) and he gives Brian a "compliment sandwich" and it's the same concept that Derting was alluding to. Tahereh Mafi talked about how she worked full-time while writing her second novel and that she once wrote 30,000 words (about 100 pages) in four days. She needs a quiet environment to write and I cracked up at her comment that she basically locks herself in her house, blocks everyone out, and "pants are optional." I like living the pants optional life as well. Her writing environment came up again later in the event when talking about listening to music while writing. Veronica Rossi said she often listens to movie soundtracks because they are written to be purposely evocative and that she recently listened to the Bourne Identity soundtrack while writing. Hand said it was exactly that which made it hard for her to listen to music while writing--she ended up writing the emotional ups and downs of the music into the writing. Mafi said she has noise-cancelling headphones but that she sometimes listens to rain noises on her computer to get her into the dystopian mood of her novel, which the audience laughed about because seriously, we're in Seattle. If someone needs to set the doom and gloom mood, all they need to do is visit during one of our 7-8 months of rainy grayness. (luckily, yesterday was really sunny and beautiful!)
| The topic, not so surpringsly, changed to a discussion of "darkness" in young adult literature and the authors each addressed their feelings on the issue, though they mostly agreed that they go where the story leads them. Derting said she didn't add anything dark gratuitously and doubted that other authors do either. Mafi stated that she doesn't really feel like anything in her book is "edgy," more that she stayed true to her character's voice. Rossi made a good point that what is appropriate for one person may not be appropriate for another in terms of violence, romance, or anything else and Cynthia Hand piggybacked on this by saying (and I agree with her sentiment) that it is rarely the teenagers who are complaining about darkness in YA--it is the adult readers. | 
Veronica Rossi, talking about Under the Never Sky
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Cynthia Hand
Kimberly Derting joked about being a few years older than the other authors. She remembers reading Stephen King, John Saul, and other authors as a young adult due to the dearth of YA literature when she was in that age group. (She also mentioned her childhood aspirations of becoming a lady truck driver like on B.J. and the Bear) Hand echoed what the authors at the last event said--that not just following the story and staying true to the characters is what is important and authors shouldn't talk down to teenagers or alter storylines to satisfy any group. She did say that editing out some scenes is not as hard as it probably used to be because the internet allows for deleted scenes to have their own place and they don't just disappear into a void.
| An audience member asked a very insightful (and nicely worded) question about how to take that jump from writing for fun to actually attempting to get published. Tahereh Mafi spoke about how she has always been just a huge, huge reader. To her, J.K. Rowling and some other authors are amazing and the Potterverse is so close to her heart. When reading the books, she was in awe that someone could write something so amazing; How could she do something like writing a novel? When she started working after college, she found she had a lot of free time so she started writing and when she finished her first draft, she basically Googled the crap out of anything and everything to figure out what came next. | 
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When the inevitable question of "What book do you wish you'd written?" came up, Cynthia Hand spoke about her recent love of the voice in Blood Red Road and the originality of Cinder. Veronica Rossi said she loved Kristin Cashore's writing and would consider it a compliment if anything she'd ever written was compared to Cashore and said that she rereads Jane Austen books every year. (at which point, Catie will be happy to know, Tahereh Mafi and Rossi fangirled over Captain Wentworth and Persuasion) Kimberly Derting chose To Kill A Mockingbird and then the authors all had a discussion about how it is healthy to have writer jealousy and wish you'd written something in someone else's style. I really liked what Mafi had to say on the subject which was that she never really reads something and wishes she'd written it because then it would mean that she couldn't be experiencing it as a reader. (and more about Harry Potter)
Hand, Derting, and Rossi
Some other fun facts gleaned from the event:
- Veronica Rossi is a painter and works mostly with oils.
- Kimberly Derting and Cynthia Hand share an editor
- When Cynthia Hand sees an error in a finished copy, she likes to think that all the people who read through it (and there are MANY) just got so wrapped up in the story and missed it.
- Rossi sometimes uses a text-to-speech app to listen to her book during the revision process because it is a change in perspective.
