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| Nicki and Joanna! |
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of
going up to Niagara on the Lake Public Library to the Launch Event
for Nicki Pau Preto's Heart of Flames and Joanna Hathaway's Storm
from the East! The journey to go the 40 miles from my house to the
Library was a trek (because nothing is ever simple for me). I look a
local bus downtown, caught a special bus up to Niagara Falls, walked
across the Canadian Border via the Rainbow Bridge, and took my first
ever Uber ride! It took 3 hours and I was frozen (I don't know how I
forgot that it is always 20 degrees colder near the falls. Almost
like I haven't lived here for 27 years...), but it was 100% worth the
adventure!
The launch was held in an intimate
meeting room, decorated with tons of paintings by local artists,
several of which I would have bought in a heartbeat if I had money. I
was the first to arrive and was able to grab a seat off to the side
in the front row! The authors got lovely personalized book mugs from
the library and the head of the teen programming facilitated the
event! Fellow First Rider Raven also asked questions from Bookstagram
through a livestream!
Nicki and Joanna talked about their
publishing journeys. I was surprised to find out that Nicki's first
agent actually dropped her because they claimed that “YA Fantasy is
dead.” HA! As if! It is still one of the most popular genres around
today! Nicki had always had the dream of publishing whereas it was
never a true goal of Joanna's, who originally wrote for the fun of
it! She was pushed by her writing group to enter a contest. A contest
that she won and gained an agent through!
Both authors also addressed their worst
and best parts of the journey. For Nicki, it was being dropped
by the
first agent, but Joanna apparently had a truly terrible cover for her
debut Dark of the West. The best thing about her publishing journey
was that they got rid of that cover! (I'm intensely curious about
this cover now! Joanna if you're reading this please send it to my
IG!! I promise I will keep it a secret!) Nicki's dream goal of having
the subscription box Owlcrate choose her book and in February 2019
that was realized and it still startles her that she got that lucky.
Both Nicki and Joanna agreed that their favorite parts had just been
extreme good luck!
A big part of writing fantasy is
reigning in the detail when worldbuilding. Joanna Hathaway is a huge
history nerd and kept trying to add more history to her books, which
are fantasy based on the world wars. At one point she was told off by
her editior for having a long paragraph on the differences between a
Spitfire plane and a Seafire plane! “It's a fantasy world, Joanna!
The Spitfire can do what the Seafire does if you need it to!!”
oops! She would also become fixated with making sure the speeds of
the planes were accurate, like how much sea would they cover, going
at what pace, until she got so fed up she threw up her hands and
declared that her imaginary spitseafire planes could just
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| Nicki Pau Preto and I! |
Nicki Pau Preto also felt this type of
pressure while writing Heart of Flames. She laughed, “My map
doesn't match what's in my head and what I wrote in the first book
before I got a map, so I'm really confused generally when trying to
figure out distances now. I was googling eagle flights and doing the
math. Finally I gave up and just did whatever worked with the plot.”
Nicki invented things and then had to cut it. Joanna was drawing on
history whereas Nicki was just doing all this to herself! She became
committed to the depth of the novels and their dense history of her
made up world after her editor kept saying “MORE MORE,” so
basically she blames Sarah Macabe at Simon Pulse! (Joanna was clearly
jealous and she would love to run wild with details!!)
A startling revelation came when asked
what inspired the authors to write about their topics. It turns out
that Nicki originally wanted to write about dragons, but felt with
the popularity of Game of Thrones that the market would be overrun so
she chose Phoenixes despite being afraid of birds! She isn't afraid
of her phoenixes though, it is almost therapeutic to write about them
now! It was also quite interesting to learn that Joanna chose to
write about wars due to her love of history (something we have in
common)!
Both authors write from multiple
perspectives in their novels. Nicki has 5 POVs in Heart of Flames and
said that “keeping [them] in order was challenging. It was like
writing five different books, since all of the characters have to
have a story and intercut!” She laughed a laugh of someone
incredibly stressed out about her life choices and sighed, “I don't
recommend it!”
I was fascinated to learn that one of
the original two agents that offered to take up Dark of the West told
Joanna that the book would be better if it didn't have the pilot, but
just the princess. Since the book is told equally through Athan the
pilot's and Aurelia's points of view it is alarming to think of what
the books could have been. I can't speak for all readers, but I for
one am so glad Joanna kept the story true to her history nerd loving
self and kept Athan in. The pilot aspect is what makes her books
stand out so wonderfully from the crowd!
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| Joanna Hathaway and I! |
One of the most lovely lessons I think
the authors stressed at this event was that you have to be true to
the story you want to tell even when you have to sacrifice some
things when you are published. Be true to what you want the story to
be and trust what you're doing because it always first and foremost
still has to be good to you, otherwise why are you working so hard!
This especially came up when Nicki and Joanna were discussing how
different it was to write one's first book vs the rest of a trilogy
after the first novel is out and being consumed by the public. They
agreed that writing the first book in isolation was a great help to
figuring out what the story needed to be, even if you have to “write
it wrong first” as Nicki said. But when it came to writing the
second book they agreed there is more pressure when knowing there is
an audience out there. Joanna said that she has to be careful not to
be influenced by her readers even though it now “feels like a
partnership. I don't want to do something so out of left field that
it won't be satisfying any long because [reader and writer] are in
this together now!” Nicki mentioned that as she writes the third
and final book in the Crown of Feathers trilogy she is getting real
time reaction from readers as they devour Heart of Flames, the second
novel that was just released. At one point she found herself assuring
a reader that the next books would indeed have more of the romance
that readers were eager for only to realize later that she had
actually cut a lot of it out! Joanna was also startled by how some
readers were gunning for the long desired relationship in her books
to pan out further and was worried because her characters actually
won't see each other again for a large chunk of book two! The point
of all of this was to reiterate that books as they are being written
belong to the authors that created them. If their vision isn't
fulfilled the book is kind of a moot point. I truly loved this
message from them because it isn't often expressed or understood by
demanding readers.
At the end of the event I asked the
question that had most been on my mind while reading the Crown of
Feather books and that is about Nicki's process of writing the
historical documents that are scattered throughout the books and the
epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. It turns out that while
working on her first book, her editor suggested adding in the
documents as a way of cutting out some of the larger world building
paragraphs. Now since they are expected as part of the format of
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| Joanna and Nicki with their readers! |
All of this was absolutely amazing to
hear live from the authors directly! It is such a fun and lucky thing
to be able to spend an afternoon and actually talk to the people who
brought worlds to life on the page. After the event, the authors held
a signing of their books. I hung back so that almost everyone else
who attended had gone ahead so that I could spend more time with
Nicki and Joanna (because I am selfish like that). It was well worth
the wait! It was a pleasure meeting them both! (I actually gushed to
both of them on Instagram when I posted these photos on my account
@bookwormextraordinaire). I felt like I already knew Nicki through
the internet so it was particularly awesome to meet her and be able
to talk about the First Riders in person! And oh my gosh, Joanna was
an a sweetheart! She even had me message her when I got home to make
sure I arrived safely. These two ladies are as lovely as they are
talented and it was truly worth the trek I made to meet them!
~Laura!
PS here is a photo of a very frozen Laura posing on the Rainbow Bridge near Niagara Falls with my books!
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