Out and About: Stephanie Perkins in Manila + Giveaway: Signed Anna and the French Kiss!

Out and about is a feature here on Fragments of Life for events, book launches and movie adaptations.

For the fifth Out and about, I’ll talk about meeting the lively and lovely Stephanie Perkins, the author of the bestselling books Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door and of course, the upcoming Isla and the Happily Ever After!

The Basics:

Who:

Photo Credit to the enthusiastic admin of Stephanie Perkins PH, Kayla from the Bookish Owl!

The author is: Stephanie Perkins!
The Organizer is: National BookStore.

What books:

When: July 6, 2014, two in the afternoon

Where: National Book Store, Glorietta 1

How aka details:

Photo credit to Kate from the Bookaholic Blurbs!

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

• According to Stephanie, you can write a book that feels realistically in a foreign country and never leave your home if you know how to read a book well and pull the correct information out of it. She was really lucky that she had the finances to fly to Paris and research for Anna.
• While in Paris, she read every book she could find and just try to get that full cultural immersion via books.
• Stephanie Perkins was a librarian. (And librarians are very, very good at research.) *winks*
• Out of all the male characters, Crickett was the one that was most similar to Stephanie's husband, Jarrod. In addition to this, she wrote a little bit of Jarrod into all the male main characters. He is her inspiration, which is just so sweet and touching. She met her husband when she was 17 and she is currently living her happily ever after with him.
• She has an upcoming book in 2015, currently found on her website as "Untitled Horror Novel." It is a contemporary horror - based on real life horror and not in supernatural/paranormal-influenced ones. Her inspiration for writing horror stories is Stephen King. Our lovely author actually really likes horror.
• Anna and the French Kiss was a product of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It took Stephanie seven years to finish the book.
• When it comes to writing, she writes quite slowly. If we would put together Anna, Lola and Isla, Stephanie would write 10 pages per day on an average. (Which is just fine as I have started her book and found it very well-written!)
• Series vs companion books. Anna, Lola and Isla are considered not as companion books but as installments of a series. The reason behind this was that Stephanie adores her lovelies, aka characters - whether minor or important ones, so much. So she writes stories for all of them and they are not forgotten. She wants to focus on each one of them and explore their stories. Also, in every book, there is a plot, a conflict. She doesn't want the same character to keep suffering until the final book. Hence, the switch of focus to the other characters. (I feel that she wants all of her characters to have a happily ever after.

Me, Stephanie Perkins and signed books!

Because Kai's selfie-snapping skill is improving, I just had to post this. :)

Giveaway Alert: I got an extra copy of Anna and the French Kiss, for a lucky reader who wasn't able to go to the signing yesterday. So you guys know the drill. :) If you have questions/comments/reactions, please do leave them below! Thanks for sticking until the end of the post. :)

"You are one lucky reader." The prize.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

NBS team continues to amaze me with their utter awesomeness! Thank you, thank you, thank you for the surprise ARC of Isla and the Happily Ever After! Thanks to National Book Store for the amazing event!