Previously on The BEAUpire Diaries…

My last blog post featured some of my favorite books in a variety of genres. This blog will be about one genre in particular and my favorite author, Veronica Roth. She is the author of Chosen Ones, the Carve the Mark sequel, and the Divergent series, also one of the first book series that I ever read. Fast forward six or seven years later, Veronica Roth is coming to my city to promote her new Dystopia/Mystery/Thriller, Poster Girl. To quickly summarize her latest novel: it takes place between the cities of Seattle and Portland after the main character, Sonya searches for a missing girl as a favor to free herself from imprisonment after their “perfect” society falls apart. 

On October 26th, at Powell’s Books in Oregon, I met Veronica Roth on her book tour. The event was after hours in the store, so it was quiet and all attendees were just as anxiously waiting for her as I was. I went to the event alone, so I didn’t have a friend to get out all of my excited feelings to before she walked out — that would have definitely helped me with all of the tears I was fighting back when she did step out with her husband. I had expected there to be a whole team of people assisting her, but it was just Veronica and her husband, which was so nice and made things more intimate. 

The audience had the opportunity to write down questions for her when we got closer to the event’s end, and this is the one thing that I wish I had spent more time on in advance. I asked three questions, and the best one I had asked was answered before it was time for audience questions. The question was whether or not she was working on trying to get away from being known as the author of the Divergent series by not further promoting the book on her social media. The short answer to this question was yes. Roth had written Divergent when she was 24 years old and for a debut novel to take off as Divergent did completes all of the goals an author often has before having to really work for them. She summarizes this question by stating that she was left with a goal void and wasn’t sure where to go after that, which raised the question for her, “What is next after your first book does all the things you’ve ever dreamed of as an author?”

All that being said Veronica did talk a little bit about what it was like being on the set of all three Divergent movies which I was happy to get some inside on. It was obvious in the conversation that both Veronica and her husband had some mixed feelings about how things went for the films. They both joked about how the movies were true to the spirit of her books, but as they continued filming they got further away from what she had originally written. When she was on set for the third film she remembered walking around the filming location and having no idea where she was and why the actors were wearing the outfits they had on. Her husband answered with a little more hostility stating that Roth was only able to be so patient during the process. She wraps up this segment by expressing her gratitude for the films and how she wouldn’t be so far into her career without them. 

On the topic of her newly published title, Poster Girl, Veronica stated that she had intended on writing the sequel to her book Chosen Ones, she joked “I can’t be relied on,” after having instead found herself writing another dystopian novel. She talked about her love for her new main character Sonya and the joy she has in writing heroic figures with an attitude problem, which I happen to love reading because same. This led to a conversation about how a lot of the time women writers are accused of self-inserting themselves into their characters. Roth’s grandfather had constantly accused her of being her character Tris Prior from Divergent which she absolutely hated hearing. 

The event is concluded with one last question from an audience member who asked for Veronica’s advice on how to get more teens to read and she joked that writers should keep getting their books adapted and make movies, but then defends teens, claiming it can be “hard for teens to read and let someone else’s words in,” so to give them some slack. The book signing portion is what wrapped everything up and I was practically shaking from nerves when I got up to the table trying to find something clever or funny to say. I first handed her my copy of Divergent and told her it is my old copy from 2012 which I don’t actually know to be true, but she was kind anyway and wrote “Be Brave” on the inside and then took my copy of Poster Girl to sign. All in all, a great night, and I am thrilled to say I can check meeting my favorite author off of my bucket list.