When I saw that the Dark Days authors were doing a tour I was soooooo excited! Then when they announced the tour dates and locations I was so bummed because they weren’t coming to DC. But then I saw that they were coming to Cary, NC and NC isn’t that far so I googled the city and it was only 3 hours away, only 30 minutes further than DC, but with DC traffic it’s like the same thing, so I forced asked Kate into going with me. We had so much fun and it was completely worth the drive down there (though having the sun in my face for 3 hours kind of sucked). 

My group picture turned out horrible. It’s really, really bad, so instead here is the hedgehog!

This stop on the Dark Days tour included Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, Tahereh Mafi and Veronica Rossi and they were such a blast!

They each took a few minutes to describe their recent releases and as they were all the second or third book they were careful to avoid any spoilers. When talking about Everbound, Brodi Ashton talked about how Nikki had to go to the underworld to save a trinket, which later on became the “trinket with abs.” One of the best quotes of the night came from Ashton when she described her book in five words “girl follows guy, gets screwed.” Ashton also talked about how hard world building was for her. When she had to create the underworld she made it round, but some land on it and then water and her editor said “No, that’s earth. Try again.” She tried again and this time the water was green and her editor said “Still earth, try again.” She said it took multiple tries before she finally figured it out using a paper plate! (And there is a really cool map of it in Everbound)

It was really interesting to hear Cynthia Hand talk about the end of her series and how hard it was. All the authors talked a bit about their editors and what happens if they disagree. All of them said that they know that their editor wants what’s best for them and the book but they don’t always end up agreeing on everything. Hand said that when she wrote boundless she wrote this amazing beginning that took place in Italy and her editor wanted to take it out of the book. They went back and forth on the issue for awhile and that’s how the novella Radiant came to be! It was a win-win.

Tahereh Mafi was the only author there whom I haven’t already read and that made me a little sad because she was pretty awesome. She mentioned that she turned in many, many books before Shatter Me turned out to be the one. One of my favorite stories of the night was when Mafi told us about her first novel, about a girl with magical purple eyelashes. How cool is that? She also mentioned that when the idea for Shatter Me came to her she sat down and just started writing and the first pages in Shatter Me today are the same as what she first wrote.

Veronica Rossi talked about how she always liked things that have great contrast and that’s where the idea for Under the Never Sky came from.  Rossi said that because she is surrounded by a lot of boys it’s not that hard to write Perry’s point of view, though she does have her husband read them. He tells her when things don’t feel quite right and also laid down the rule that Perry can only cry once per book. Rossi also talked about her own dependence on technology and that it’s almost scary how much she depends on it, and that if given the chance to either live in the pods with all the technology or live outside them “in the wild” she would choose to live outside the pods.

The Dark Days Tour was tons of fun and I’m so glad I went. I’m also really excited because Kate and I are taking another trip to North Carolina on Monday for the Breathless Reads Tour which includes Beth Revis, Fiona Paul, Jessica Spotswood, Elizabeth Richards and Morgan Rhodes. I will also come clean and admit right now that after only 7 days I will not be sticking with my February book plan.