Author Event Recap & Giveaway: Becca Fitzpatrick & Christina Lauren

 

I (Rachel) had the pleasure of attending an author event for Becca Fitzpatrick and the writing duo known as Christina Lauren to launch their new releases Black Ice and Sublime respectively.  I read and LOVED Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick and I'll be giving away a SIGNED copy below. 

It was a fun event with the authors, each had stories of writing and inspiration that really captivated the whole crowd.  Here are some of the highlights:

Becca Fitzpatrick:

• Inspriations for Becca Fitzpatrick’s Black Ice are a missed Spring Break camping trip to the Tetons and a cheesy 90’s romantic suspense movie: The Companion.  The books plot has almost nothing to do with the movie, other than kidnapping and a mountain cabin, so don’t worry there.  She did eventually go back to the Tetons and hike some of the trail featured in the book.

• Becca decided on writing at the young age of eight when she watched the movie Romancing the Stone in which the heroine who is a romance writer traveled to Columbia, hunted for treasure, and fell in love with a tall dark and handsome man! She thought: how could you go wrong there?!

• In college she was sidetracked from this goal and instead wanted to be a spy. She applied to the CIA twice and never heard back. Their loss.

• Becca sometimes struggles with dialogue in a story. To make sure her teen dialogue is authentic she’ll sometimes go to movie theaters, coffee shops, etc, and eavesdrop on teen conversations.

• It took her five years of queries to sell Hush, Hush. Each time she’d work on it some more and resubmit. Her writing advice is persistence, determination, and hard work.

• Becca was asked if she had Drew Doyan’s phone number (The male model for the covers of the Hush, Hush series).  Lol! FYI: She does have it! 

• Becca had sold film rights to Hush, Hush sometime back, the screen play was written and she read it and liked it, but it just didn’t feel right. She’s a firm believer in going with your gut and it just didn’t feel right to go forward with the movie at this time. She let the film rights expire and they have now reverted back to her. At this time there are no plans for a Hush, Hush movie but that may change in future.

• Favorite books: The Summer I Turned Pretty series by Jenny Hahn because she felt exactly the awkward teen girl in the pages when she was growing up.

 Christina Lauren:

• Christina Lauren is a writing duo who met through writing fan fiction. They liked each other’s stories and so decided to collaborate.

• Sublime was inspired by: the Wordsworth poem, Lucy Gray about a girl who walks out into a snow storm and never comes back, the urban legend of The Lady in White and by stories of someone falling into a frozen lake and coming out intake after a long period of time. They compared it to Flatliners meets ghosts.

• The title of Sublime comes from the process of Sublimation where a substance is converted directly from a solid into a gas without going into the liquid phase. They were happy the publishers let them keep their original title.

• Christina Lauren’s adult book Beautiful Bastard has been optioned by Constantine.  They’ve read the script and love it. They had script approval, but beyond that they trust to the film makers.  As Lauren put it: They know how to write books, make a great quesadilla, but don’t know anything about making movies.

• Lauren said getting published is luck and a weird convergence of things. It's not enough just to write a great book. Writing a book of your heart that also happens to be on trend is a big factor. But write the book you’re passionate about, not what you think would sell, otherwise you'll never be happy with the work.

• Favorite books: Fobidden by Tabitha Suzuma, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson, and anything by Stephanie Perkins.

I attended this event at the Huntington Beach, California Barnes & Noble and that place is huge! The YA section goes on for days:

I LOVED Black Ice so I had Becca Fitzpatrick sign an extra copy for one of our readers! The giveaway is restricted to US and Canadian Residents. Just fill out the rafflecopter for a chance to win.

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