Out and About: #VTRinPH Book signing with Veronica Rossi, Tahereh Mafi+ Ransom Riggs + Giveaway!

Out and about is a feature here on Fragments of Life for events, book launches and movie adaptations. For the fourth Out and about, I’ll talk about the Bloggers Forum and Book Signing with Veronica Rossi, Tahereh Mafi and Ransom Riggs.

The Basics:

Who:

The authors are: Veronica Rossi (bestselling author of Under the Never Sky, Through the Ever Night, Into the Still Blue), Tahereh Mafi (bestselling author of Shatter Me, Unravel Me, Ignite Me and Unite Me) and Ransom Riggs (bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City).
The Organizer is: National BookStore.

When: April 26, 2014

Where: National Book Store, Glorietta 4

How aka details:

I have met Tahereh Mafi and Ransom Riggs last year, you can check that out here. So I was really ecstatic to meet them again! It's a rare occurrence, so I'm really honored to be a part of these two events. Plus, it was really fun to meet with my co-bloggers, who happen to be my closest friends too.

Bloggers!

The actual forum started out with Chyna from Lite-Rate-Ture. Amidst people listening intently to the authors, commenting about bookish stuff and the authors answering our questions, I admit that I couldn't catch everything. If my memory serves me right, here are some tidbits from the forum:

Veronica Rossi

• Veronica Rossi did not set out specifically to write about a certain message. But what she wanted people to pick up from her book is that, if you are kind and respectful and if you are good to the people around you, you would find happiness.
• The sequel, Through the Ever Night, was the hardest book to write for her. She struggled writing that book. But now, thousands of fans devour and enjoy this pretty. :)
• In writing books, some authors have to "kill" some of the characters. It's pretty much part of author life. Our V. Rossi does not regret killing some of her characters. It's natural and organic to the book.
• Louisse from The Soul Sisters asked V. Rossi about co-authoring Boomerang. So, she is writing under the nomdeplume Noelle August. The book started out in a Skype chat with Veronica's fellow author. At the end of the chat, they were thinking: should we just write this? And they did write it. The story was like a sandbox for Veronica, all fun.
  

Tahereh Mafi

• Kazhy from My Library in the Making asked Tahereh when she knew who Juliette would end up with. *Spoiler alert* She found out at the end of the first book.
  
• Her first book, Shatter Me, is free-formed. So the first book was about exploring the lives and personalities of the main characters. I guess this is also the reason why Juliette started out as weak and became stronger throughout the series. There is so much room for growth.
  
• In addition to the point above, Juliette's weakness in Shatter Me was intentional. It was planned out.
  
• If one of her characters could be her companion, it would be Kenji. In 2013, she mentioned that Kenji is the conglomeration of her brother's personalities and characteristics. So she feels that she has already lived with Kenji. That is so sweet.

Ransom Riggs

• I was one of the people who asked Ransom Riggs, here is my question: If a single photograph could represent Miss Peregrine's and Hollow City, what would it look like? At first, Ransom said that it could be anything but eventually decided that it would look like the inside of his heart, so it would be dark and red.
  
• One of the bloggers asked what was his reaction to Tim Burton being involved in the movie adaptation for Miss Peregrine's, he screamed: I'm so excited! And of course, mentioned that Tim Burton was the man.
  
• He mentioned that when it comes to criticisms and reactions to his book, he doesn't like being told he's wrong but that it was part of a writer's life. Also, he mentioned that he did not write a daring book so he didn't really get strong comments. :)
  
• Ransom mentioned that Hollow City took a longer time to write as it depends on the photos he would be using. So he was literally traveling all over USA, meeting with collectors and seeing their photographs. The pictures became guides for him as he wrote.

Pictures with VTR! :)

Ending the bloggers forum with group photos!

Signed goodies :)

The next activity is the Book Signing in Glorietta 4. We heard that the early bird of the event came at 1:45 am. That is solid dedication, guys. Respect. There were around 2000 fans down there, each one waiting patiently to meet the big three: VTR.

Photo credit to Sab from Sab The Book Eater! ;)

Photo credit to Hazel, Kai, Louisse, Jesselle, Sab and Kate - thank you for the snapshots ;)

Big thanks to National Book Store for the awesome forum + event! Because I want to share the book love, I will be giving away a signed copy of Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi! You know the drill. This is open to Philippine residents only. (sorry guys!) ;) Enter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Awesome recap posts:

Amaterasu Reads
Sab The Book Eater
Defiantly Defiant
Lite-rate-ture
The Soul Sisters
The Bookaholic Blurbs
The Lifelong Bookworm