YA Author Group Tour at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, VA

This event was in January, so this post is super late, but better late than never!

It’s been a while since I’ve been to an author event, so I was over the moon when I saw that three authors were coming through Richmond and making a stop at  Fountain Bookstore, our local indie. I’ve been fortunate enough to go to events in Washington, D.C, New York City and Virginia Beach, but I have to say the Richmond ones the best. They typically tend to be smaller and more intimate and just more fun !

This time around the three authors visiting were Megan Shepherd, Stephanie Perkins and Victoria Schwab

All of the authors played really well of each other and discussed the struggles of writing a sequel as well as some of the hurdles of fighting controversy in YA literature. Here are some things I picked up on:

• Megan Shepherd only intended for The Madman’s Daughter to be standalone, but her publishers asked for more.  
• Stephanie Perkins had been writing Lola and The Boy Next Door for ten years and it was originally an adult novel. She also mentioned that her first novel, Anna and The French Kiss was a NaNoWriMo project.

• Victoria Schwab wrote her first in a coffee shop  (unpublished) novel while she was in her senior year of studying design in college.

There was also some really good discussion among the authors about the definition of YA fiction and what makes a YA book about teenagers different than an adult novel about teenagers. 

The authors were so generous with their time (and swag) and I think I will definitely make a special effort to read all these books this year !