Tag Archives: Simon and Schuster

Author Encounter | Anna Todd, at Indigo Green Room Eaton Centre

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22557520With the success of Fifty Shades of Grey (originally Twilight fanfiction) and the Mortal Instruments series (which allegedly began as Harry Potter fanfiction), the success of Anna Todd’s After series should come as no surprise. Originally published on Wattpad as fanfiction of British boyband One Direction, After received millions of views and was eventually picked up by Simon and Schuster for traditional publishing.

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Anna in the Indigo Green Room before her signing last Wednesday. I hadn’t read the After series on Wattpad and new little beyond the fact that it starred Harry Styles and had millions of fans online, and I was interested in finding out more.

In brief, After is about innocent college freshman Tessa falling in love with bad boy older student Hardin. Their relationship is a classic good girl/bad boy romance, with Tessa’s goodness making Hardin want to reform.

Fellow blogger Hayley commented that the relationship between Tessa and Hardin was “so toxic, but I couldn’t stop reading!” Anna admitted that their relationship was indeed toxic, but pointed out that it’s fiction. She brought up an interesting point about what we look for in book boyfriends versus real life boyfriends. Readers want some level of difficulty in book boyfriends, she says, without necessarily wanting it in real life. She spoke about the popularity of the bad boy trope and pointed out that the idea of a boy wanting to change for the better, for the sake of a girl he loves, is attractive. Anna was quick to point out that most readers distinguish between the fantasy of this within fiction, and what we actually look for in real life. “I wouldn’t want my husband to treat me like [Hardin treats Tessa],” she said. Yet fiction is a safe place to indulge these fantasies, and allow ourselves to fall for a boy who would be better for no reason other than love for us, and us alone.

Anna says that After is “a combination of all these things I love.” Beyond the hero being originally inspired by Harry Styles, Anna’s love of the Fifty Shades trilogy is also reflected in Hardin and Tessa’s romance. Another influences include Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice (an early scene between Hardin and Tessa closely resembles Elizabeth and Darcy’s first encounter at a party).

Meeting Anna at the Indigo Green Room, Eaton Centre

Meeting Anna at the Indigo Green Room, Eaton Centre

The transition from Wattpad fanfiction to published novels was very smooth, which Anna credits to her editor at Simon and Schuster. She views the published version as a definite improvement to the unpolished original. Awkward phrases and grammatical errors were smoothed out, and the story expanded to add complexity to certain characters.

Despite her positive experience with traditional publishing, Anna maintains loyalty to the Wattpad community, and asserts her thankfulness at the support of the online community. She particularly loves the constant stream of feedback from readers that Wattpad provides. When working with her Simon and Schuster editor, Anna admits the switch from crowdsourced editing to editing by a single person felt odd, and that, in order to mimic the Wattpad environment, her editor gave more detailed edits than he usually would.

After has since been picked up for a movie deal, and we naturally asked Anna about who she sees in the roles. She says Indiana Evans is far and away the definitive choice for Tessa in her mind. For Hardin, she thinks Douglas Booth would be a great choice, and she would love to see Ansel Elgort as Landon (a classic good boy and friend to Tessa). For Zed (a friend of Hardin’s whom fellow blogger Hayley describes as “the Wickham” in the series), Anna admits that he was originally based on Zane from One Direction, and in her mind, she still can’t think of anyone else in the role.

Just a small section of the long line awaiting Anna's book signing at Indigo Eaton Centre

Just a small section of the long line awaiting Anna’s book signing at Indigo Eaton Centre

What’s Anna working on now? Other than publicity for this title and writing the fourth book in the series, she’s also expanding on a story about Landon’s romance with someone (I can’t remember the name and can’t find it on Google, but Hayley, who’d read the entire series on Wattpad, was really excited to hear this, so I think fans of the series will be thrilled). The next two books will be published by Simon and Schuster over the next couple of months, and Anna highly recommends waiting for the published versions — Simon and Schuster’s editing has smoothed out the rough edges, and the stories have been expanded for print. As well, Anna says that she may change the ending of the entire series for the print version, just because of the way the characters and storylines have developed in print.

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As an aside and possibly minor, but to my mind important, note about my feelings on celebrity fanfiction in general: while I have few reservations about fanfiction on fictional characters getting mainstream recognition, the idea of fanfiction about real people does make me very uncomfortable. Not that I’ve never fantasized about celebrities, but to actually make these fantasies public seems to me somehow a violation of those celebrities’ boundaries. All that to say that the origin of After makes me uncomfortable not because of its plot or any pre-formed opinion about the quality of fanfiction, but because of its use of a real celebrity as the hero.

I did receive a copy of this book for review, and will put aside my reservations about its origin and celebrity fanfiction in general as I read it. Just a thought, and if celebrity fanfiction becomes more of a trend, I’d love to know what the rest of you think about it.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the opportunity to meet and speak with Anna Todd.

Book Event and Giveaway | Philippa Gregory in Toronto

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Fan of great historical fiction and the Tudor era? Check out this awesome event from Simon and Schuster Canada coming to Toronto on September 22! Philippa Gregory, author of a number of historical fiction bestsellers (including my personal favourite, the classic The Other Boleyn Girl) will be doing a lecture and book signing at the Al Green Theatre, Toronto, to promote her new novel The King’s Curse.

About The King’s Curse:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the Starz original series The White Queen comes the story of lady-in-waiting Margaret Pole and her unique view of King Henry VIII’s stratospheric rise to power in Tudor England.

Regarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII’s claim to the throne, Margaret Pole, cousin to Elizabeth of York (known as the White Princess) and daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, is married off to a steady and kind Lancaster supporter—Sir Richard Pole. For his loyalty, Sir Richard is entrusted with the governorship of Wales, but Margaret’s contented daily life is changed forever with the arrival of Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon. Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend to the honeymooning couple, hiding her own royal connections in service to the Tudors.

After the sudden death of Prince Arthur, Katherine leaves for London a widow, and fulfills her deathbed promise to her husband by marrying his brother, Henry VIII. Margaret’s world is turned upside down by the surprising summons to court, where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine. But this charmed life of the wealthiest and “holiest” woman in England lasts only until the rise of Anne Boleyn, and the dramatic deterioration of the Tudor court. Margaret has to choose whether her allegiance is to the increasingly tyrannical king, or to her beloved queen; to the religion she loves or the theology which serves the new masters. Caught between the old world and the new, Margaret Pole has to find her own way as she carries the knowledge of an old curse on all the Tudors.

Check out a chapter excerpt from The King’s Curse at http://issuu.com/touchstonebooks/docs/the_king_s_curse.

Win a copy of The King’s Curse:

Thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada, I’m giving away a copy of The King’s Curse to one of my readers! This contest is open to Canada only.

Click here to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway.

Meet Philippa Gregory:

Meet the author in person at the Al Green Theatre, Toronto! Information and tickets here.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for a copy of the book for the giveaway.

Review | FaceOff, edited by David Baldacci

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18775278Ever wondered what would happen if Lee Child’s Jack Reacher teamed up with Joseph Finder’s Nick Heller? Or if Ian Rankin’s John Rebus and Peter James’ Roy Grace worked together to solve a cold case? FaceOff, edited by David Baldacci and featuring 23 of the world’s best thriller writers, sounds like a thriller fan’s ultimate fantasy, and with such a super star line up of authors, it should come as no surprise that the collection is one of the best page turners I’ve read this year.

The best part for me was the introduction before each story, where Baldacci explains why these authors were paired up, what they decided would be the most natural way for their characters to end up together, and how they collaborated on the story. In the first face-off, for example, we learn that Michael Connelly wrote the first six pages of the story and a few ideas on how the story could go, and expected Dennis Lehane to take a couple of days to finish the story. Instead, Lehane took several weeks and added twenty more pages, “evolving the plot from the shorthand to the complex and humorous.” I love this peek into the working styles of these great writers. The book is purportedly a series of face-offs between popular thriller characters, but these introductions reveal how much it is also a series of collaborations between the authors.

I especially love that the collaboration between these writers I admire goes beyond the collaboration we see in this volume. For example, Steve Berry and James Rollins have inserted sly references to the other’s characters in their own books in the past, and with this anthology, finally got the opportunity to bring Cotton Malone and Gray Pierce together for a full story.

The stories in this anthology are all solid thriller shorts. It’s exciting to see characters you like working together, but that’s a gimmick that could grow old pretty quick. The authors in this anthology had a delicate balancing act — how to feature both major characters equally and still have it be about the story rather than simply a fan fiction mashup of audience favourite cameos? Sure, at times, there was a bit of expository dialogue that served more to highlight the characters as stars rather than the story, but that’s forgivable, given the purpose of this anthology. What’s important is that even with these little asides to wink at the fans, each of the stories here is solidly constructed, and with a compelling plot.

While all the stories were fun reads, there were a few standouts. Gaslighted, by R.L. Stine, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child pitted Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy vs Aloysius Pendergast and was creepy as hell. Unlike the other match ups, this one featured a clear battle between the main characters. I’m unfamiliar with both characters — I’d read only R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series and don’t remember Slappy at all, and I’d read only one Preston/Child book years ago, which I found so scary (can’t remember why, to be honest) that I never dared read them again. Unsurprisingly then, this story really gave me the chills, and in a collection primarily of detective stories and real world crimes, it stood out.

Another standout is M.J. Rose and Lisa Gardner’s The Laughing Buddha, which pits the pragmatic police work of D.D. Warren vs the more esoteric Malachai Samuels, using the theft of a Buddha statue to spin a tale of past lives and a crime from centuries ago. It was suspenseful, and while both characters were apparently after solving the same crime, the contrast between Warren’s job and Samuels’ mission made it a race to the solution.

Finally, one of my favourites in the collection is Good and Valuable Consideration by Lee Child and Joseph Finder. I love the unexpected nature of the encounter, and the almost offhand way that the collaboration between Jack Reacher and Nick Heller began. Both characters were watching the same baseball game at a bar and end up sitting near a man in need of their help. Much of the conversation happens in glances between the characters — two men who don’t know each other but instinctively sense the other’s power and somehow reach a silent understanding. The writing as well seemed especially smooth, as if the authors shared the same level of mutual understanding that their characters achieved in a night at a bar. As Baldacci writes in his introduction to this face-off, “Actually, their biggest problem was who would win the Yankees-Sox game that kicks the whole thing off.”

Overall, FaceOff was a lot of fun to read. I’m a fan of thrillers in general, and so I was particularly excited to see that one of my favourite authors ever, Ian Rankin, was paired with another personal favourite, Peter James. I did wish that other personal favourites Stuart MacBride and Val McDermid had been included — can you imagine Logan McRae and Tony Hill working together to catch a super-psychopath? Epic! Volume 2, perhaps, Mr. Baldacci?

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Heads up on Thrillerfest IX, at the Grand Hyatt, NYC July 8 – 12, 2014. Many of the authors in this anthology will be there, and the conference was organized by International Thriller Writers, the group that brought these authors together for this anthology in the first place.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.