On Tuesday, I had the chance to go to the launch party for The Savage Grace by Bree Despain at The King’s English with Corey and a couple of friends. The launch party was a lot of fun not only because I got to get my copy of The Savage Grace (finally!), but also because I got to see some of my blog, Twitter, and author friends and talk to Bree for a little bit.

At the launch party for The Lost Saint, Bree talked about how writing sequels are hard. At this launch party she said that writing the end is even harder because for her entire writing career, she was learning how to actually write a novel not finish a trilogy.

She said there were four obstacles she had to face. The first was that she had created all these threads in the first two books that she had to now weave together into something coherent. The second was that she had created all these characters, and even introduces more in The Savage Grace, that she has to make sure have a decent ending to their own story. The third was that she had to deal with the situations she created that she’d put off until the last book. And, the fourth was that she had to say goodbye to characters who have been living in her head for seven years.

She said that she kept putting off writing the last two chapters because she wanted to write the “perfect ending.” She even handed in the final draft of the manuscript without the last two chapters. Her agent thought it was the end and when she told him it wasn’t, he told her that she had better get the ending in quick because the rest of the manuscript was in copyedits and they were going to print in two days! She wrote the ending in one long all nighter. She said she’s not sure if the “perfect ending” exists, but she’s really happy with how The Savage Grace all came together.

I’m pretty excited to read it. I have some wants that I hope are fulfilled. But, even if they aren’t, I’m sure the book will end satisfactorily. I did tell Bree that she’d better be on retainer so that when I need her to talk me through the harder parts, I can get a hold of her. What can I say?! The endings always stress me out, especially when love triangles are involved.

On Tuesday, I went to the Everneath launch party at The King’s English to help support Brodi Ashton. The launch party was a lot of fun. It was the largest I’ve ever been to. And, by that, I mean more people showed up to this launch party than any other launch party I’ve been to. My friends and I showed up 35 minutes before it started. We were in the process of saving seats for our other friends who were on their way when all of a sudden every seat in the place was taken. The King’s English staff got more chairs, but it took less than a minute for them to all be taken as well. The gallery was packed like sardines, standing room only for more than half of the attendees. And, that is no exaggeration!

Brodi talked about her road to success by doing her first ever PowerPoint presentation. It was a huge success! The crowd was laughing at her hilarity. (She’s really a very funny person. If she ever gets tired of writing novels, she should be a stand-up comedian or a writer for TV or movies.) She also showed us about a quarter of the rejection letters she received in the querying process for her first novel, Echo. She was “excited” to receive her first personalized rejection rather than just all the form-letter rejections. It was interesting to find out that that rejection was actually from Suzanne Collins’ agent and the agent rejected Brodi’s manuscript because he/she already had The Hunger Games manuscript on her desk getting ready to be published. After her presentation, the crowd was able to ask some questions. Some of the questions were:

• “Is it harder to write under deadline?” She answered yes.
• “Where did you get your idea?” She said that Sam, her husband, challenged her to write a heroine completely different from her first heroine. So, she thought of writing about a heroine who was broken yet strong. And, as she started thinking about that, she started thinking about why she was broken and Everneath was born.
• “Was the title always Everneath?” She said no. At first, it was Broken, then it was Underneath. Then, she and Bree Despain, friend and fellow author, decided to play with the words “forever” and “underneath” and came up with Everneath.

• Spoiler: Show

  “Did you mean to write a love triangle?” She said she doesn’t think of the book as being a love triangle. Cole is the villain. Nikki knows who she wants and it’s not the villain.

After the questions, Brodi signed books. She started around 7:30 pm. My friends and I were the second to the last in the line and our books were signed around 9:40 pm. Two hours of signing for a debut author! Isn’t that incredible?! The wait was definitely worth it.

I’m so glad I was able to go and show my support for Brodi. I absolutely love her writing style. I’ve had a chance to read both Echo and Everneath and I love them both. I hope that one day Brodi can also publish Echo. But, if not, I’m sure whatever she does publish will continue to be fantastic.

On November 1st, I had the opportunity to attend the launch party for Crossed by Ally Condie at The King’s English bookshop with a few of my friends. (Corey even came with me to this one.)

At the time of the book launch, I was about a third of the way done with an ARC of Crossed I had borrowed from my blogger friend Emily of Emily’s Reading Room, so I knew a little about what had happened. Luckily, Ally didn’t want to spoil anyone since the book had just been released that day and didn’t really go into great detail about the plot.

One of the things I enjoyed about the launch party was Ally’s vision for the setting. She said that as she wrote Matched, Southern Utah came into her mind whenever she thought about the Outer Provinces. She hiked in the slot canyons with her family almost every weekend while she was growing up, so the setting is very personal to her. And, as I’ve read about the Carving in the book, a very vivid landscape comes to mind. In fact, it reminds me of the episode of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls finds himself stranded in Southern Utah, which is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing that terrain up close and personal.

She also talked about how Matched emphasized poetry and Crossed emphasizes art. One of the 100 paintings that Cassia is familiar with is the one entitled “Chasm of the Colorado” by Thomas Moran (an image of this painting is available at Novel Notice, one of the blog tour stops posted by Ally). Ally was introduced to this painting by her mother and she felt it would be a good painting for the Matched trilogy because it represented not only the Outer Provinces, but also the wildness and unknown of Cassia’s adventure to join the rebellion against the Society.

Actually, if you’ve been following Ally’s blog tour posts for Crossed, you’ll notice that she talked about many of the things she had already or continues to guest post about on the tour. It’s all very interesting and I recommend you check those posts out.

Ally also was the keynote speaker at the Teen Book Fest at the Provo City Library last weekend. I went with a few of my blogger buddies: Suey, Jenny, Emily, and Enna Isilee. The teen book fest also had authors Elana Johnson, Robison Wells, and Kristen Landon. Unfortunately, due to lots of homework, I was only able to stay for Ally’s keynote presentation and the signing afterward. If you’d like a great recap of the other authors’ presentations, check out Suey’s post.

Ally talked again mainly about what she did at the launch. When she saw me at the event, she told me that she felt bad that I had to listen to her talk about the same things again. I laughed and told her that I didn’t mind.

Ally is one of the most gracious, humble people I’ve ever met. Seriously, if you ever have the chance to meet her, I’m sure you’ll find she’s super sweet and sociable. All in all, it was a great couple of events and I’m glad I could go and spend some time with friends and talking to Ally.