Out and about: Book Signing with Jenny Han!

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 meeting the fun and awesome Jenny Han.

The Basics:

Who:

The author is: Jenny Han!
The Organizer is: National BookStore.

What books:

When: June 21, 2014, afternoon

Where: National Book Store, Glorietta 4

How aka details:

Throughout the event, I got to meet Jenny Han and get to know her more as a writer and as a person. I learned the following:

• Jenny met her co-author Siobhan in David Leviathan's class (grad school). They became friends, hit it off and eventually started Burn for Burn.
• When two people are writing a novel, they tend to divide the work per character or per chapter. In Jenny and Siobhan's case, the characters appeared so often in every chapter that they needed to know all of them well enough. They worked together on the book by focusing on the events that they are most excited about.
• She has written a lot of books but so far she has not run out of ideas. She is a genius and actually has 3 novel ideas buing in her head as of the moment.
• She was asked if she could write a spin-off for Jeremiah, and why. She flat out said no, because for her Jeremiah was left in a good place and I think she was satisfied with that.
• Jenny Han likes nail art a lot. She goes to a certain Japanese nail art salon in New York. She also keeps a blog where she posts her nails: Just Another Mani Monday (yeah, like the song.)
• If she could write herself into one of her books, she would be the nanny in The Summer I Turned Pretty. /li>
  
• Quote from Amaterasu Reads: When asked if she was Lara Jean, who would be her Top Five celebrity crushes and which of them will be Peter Kavinsky for her.
  One is Alexander Skarsgard of True Blood. Daryl from Walking Dead. The cop from The Killing, he's a Swedish model. Jaime Lannister from GoT, even without the hand. Jo In Sung and recently, Seo In Guk in Reply 1997.
• My question for Jenny Han: For you, what makes a contemporary novel stand out? Would you branch out into the NA genre? Jenny says that whether a book is contemporary or fantasy or science fiction, it all boils down to these things: the universality of emotions, growing up, pain and suffering. Also, her novels are leaning towards innocence and youth. But at the same time, she believes that YA can also be sexy. In regards to NA, it is an in-between genre. Teens read adult novels and adults read YA. Anybody could read anything and there is this "crossover."
• In Jenny's books, we see a lot of sister-to-sister dynamics. In her recent book, Lara Jean and Margot reflected Jenny's relationship with her sister. "You always listen to your older sister."
• It is definitely healthy to write love letters. It really depends on a person. But for Jenny, it could be a way of coping and letting all your feelings flow out of you and onto paper. It's when you explore your deepest feelings.

Signed books (I wasn't able to get a copy of To All The Boys as it was sold out and neither was I able to spot a copy of Fire with Fire - paperback) and shirt!

Each one of us got a surprise ARC of Ashes to Ashes by Jenny Han, the last book (I think) of the series. Big thanks to Jenny and NBS team! I didn't think this kind of thing could happen twice. Thanks to National Book Store for the awesome event!