Where I relive the experience and share all the feels before, during and after meeting these fantastic authors WHO ARE BASICALLY LIFE.
2014 absolutely started with such a loud, loud bang for me. I took a two-week vacation and went to Ilocos and Palawan with my family and have seen fantastic views! Also, I attended the first Blogger's Forum/Book Signing of the year hosted by National Book Store with New York Times Best Selling Author GAYLE FORMAN! Not only was I excited to meet her, I was also super happy to see my lovely co-blogger friends who I haven't seen in ages! I was supposed to transcribe the recordings I did for the entire Blogger's Forum but my free time this past week has been limited due to work and personal things I needed to give attention to, so enjoy these pictures and my little recap!
Gayle arrived at the location jet-lagged but so lively! She actually started singing songs from the Frozen movie! Also, everyone of us at the Blogger's Forum was so tempted to ask her if we all could touch her gorgeous curls! (We are really crazy like that!). Then the interview started and here are what we have talked about:
- How she left the polar vortex of New York and welcomed Manila sunshine.
- Her book If I Stay has been continuously compared to Twilight and her expectations if she has for the movie -- she explained that the length of a book to become a movie is around 9-10 years (except for TFIOS and Divergent) and her expectations are quite too high.
- How fascinated she is with one day events and why is it appealing -- she wanted to tweak her stories and somehow showcase how lives can be changed in a day. Something happens in a day that catalyzes change.
- Favorite character of all time -- Maternal love for Mia and she's hot for Adam but she adored Winger by Andrew Smith.
- Why Cello as Mia's instrument -- Mia arrived into her mind packaged as Cellist. And a famous Cellist will play at the concert scene in the movie.
- Expectations when If I Stay was first released -- no agents nor editor during If I Stay was finished and she saved it on her computer titled "Why Not?". It felt surreal when it was published.
- Writing ritual -- COFFEE and shower.
- Which POV is harder to write: Willem or Allison? -- Willem. Because he's Dutch. She wanted Willem to be as Dutch as he could be. She couldn't get that free flow in writing because of the structure of the book. She has to check bits and pieces from Just One Day then write Just One Year.
- What song best describes Just One Day -- There's a playlist for this but she was listening to Adele while she was writing it.
- Easiest and hardest book to write -- If I Stay and her newest book called I Was Here are the easiest to write, the rest are hard.
- How exactly do you write love -- She writes it as how she feels.
- Was music a weakening or strengthening factor in Adam and Mia's relationship -- She thinks it was a weakening factor for Adam. But it is not just the music that brought these characters together but what actually music does to them.
- Allison traveled a lot in Just One Day, what were the preparations -- She took a 5-day trip in Paris and fell in love with the city. Also she traveled 3 years before college.
- Would Gayle have done the same thing as Mia did, to live for the man she loves -- She clarified that Mia did not choose to live for Adam. If she is in Mia's situation now, no way she would wake up without her family.
- Why music played an important role in If I Stay? -- Because music for her is an emotional trigger. It makes us feel intensely and her husband is a musician.
- If Gayle have a book club, what would they be reading? -- It would be The Circle by Dave Eggers.
- What is it that draws her to Contemporary and if she were to break out of the genre, what would she write -- she said there is no reason at all why she is drawn to Contemporary. These are just the stories she wanted to tell. Speculative Fiction genre if she have to branch out. She's not really sure that she would be good at Dystopia.
- Have she ever thought of finishing the songs she wrote and what bands would she want to play it -- No desire to go back to write the songs.
- Favorite among Adam's songs -- Bridge. Then Hush.
- Does she aim to bring awareness to social justice issues through her novels -- In Sisters and Sanity, she wound up writing about an issue she feels strongly about. But she is not writing issues books. The next book has an element of suicide/depression but she's set out to write human stories. That isn't what she wanna do.
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| More pictures! That's Louisse and Hazel over there! JB and Chad, too! |
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| Wacky selfie with THE Gayle Forman!! |
I just wanna thank National Book Store for hosting another awesome event and I am looking forward to attending more in the coming of months! Attending the Blogger's Forum is surely a surreal thing for me. Being acknowledged as a legit blogger makes all the hard work pay off!
Thank you again JB, Chad and National Book Store!
Please check out these links for more pictures from the Blogger's Forum + Book Signing:
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