Becca Fitzpatrick Book Signing.
|
|
| (She actually looks a lot prettier in person!) |
A couple of nights ago, I attended a Becca Fitzpatrick book signing in honour of the recent release of her latest novel, Silence. This is the third book of the Hush, Hush series following Hush, Hush and Crescendo, both of which were international bestsellers. For those of you that don't know, the series revolves around two teenagers: Patch and Nora; however, things aren't plain sailing for the young couple as Patch is a fallen angel, and Nora is a Nephilim - the two races are sworn enemies.
 |
| The room was packed! |
I've never been to a book signing before so I had no idea what to expect and I arrived feeling rather flustered (though that was probably because I had just run around half of London trying to look for the book store). I took my place near the front of the room and there was a little stage set up with a chair on, presumably where Becca Fitzpatrick was going to sit. After around 15 minutes, she entered, followed by two seriously hot angels. They were both topless, wearing nothing but skinny, black jeans and black wings - no doubt they were supposed to resemble Patch. Becca then began her talk and I was pleasantly surprised to find that she's actually really funny and a great speaker. She told us about how she got into writing (her husband signed her up for a writing class for a birthday present - as a joke!), her experiences when it came to getting published (she received about 100 rejection letters, but eventually she found someone who thought she had potential) and some details about the books themselves.
 |
| gnom. |
What I thought was really funny was that some events in the Hush, Hush series were inspired by events that actually took place during Becca's teenage years. For example, when she was a teen she moved to a different town and in this town it was customary to make grand gestures when asking someone to a dance. Her friends told her to ask the boy she had a crush on to the dance, but she couldn't think of a way to ask him so her friends suggested she give him a hot dog, with a little flag sticking out of it saying 'Beau, don't be a weiner, go to the dance with me'; however, at the very last moment, Becca chickened out, changing the name on the flag to 'Emily' her friends name. This caused a heap of problems given that Emily had already asked Beau's friend to the dance! Beau told his mum, Barbie (yep, that was her real name) about the invite and so Barbie got on the phone to all the other mums to try and suss out who had really asked Beau to the dance, and it was soon found out that it was Becca. How mortifying. Beau was forced to go the dance with Becca and he didn't speak to her for the whole night and just sat there with his arms crossed. Of course, this isn't exactly how things panned out her book; however, if you've read it you may remember Nora sneaking around in Scott's room and him coming home finding her there. Lacking inspiration, Nora held out a hotdog and said: 'Scott, don't be a weiner, go to the dance with me'. Nice save Nora. Becca's advice to any aspiring writers is to keep a journal, because you never know when something interesting might happen that you can use in your writing!
Her cure for writer's block is to plan everything out. She notes that this doesn't work for all authors, but she personally finds it very helpful to plan out exactly what's going to happen in each and every scene prior to writing it. If you find yourself stuck and unsure of what to write, this means that you've taken the story somewhere it wasn't supposed to go and she advises that you backtrack the story and try to take it a different angle and see where you end up. Whilst some writer's like to lock themselves in a room for several hours when writing, Becca simply sits in her study. Not everyone needs to have a special place for writing - what if something happened to your 'special place'? Would that be the end of your writing? It's probably better if you can write anywhere as opposed to attaching yourself to a particular place.
As for the covers of the book, I've always felt that the Hush, Hush ones have been striking and perfect for the books. Becca told us that 99% of the time, authors don't have a clue what the cover of their book is going to look like until it's published. She even said that one of her friends, a fellow author, didn't know what the cover was until she accidently stumbled upon her own book on Amazon! Fortunately for Becca Fitzpatrick, she had quite a large say in what the cover of her book looked like. First she was asked to choose two models, one for Patch and one for Nora. Then the both of them were called in for test shots and the model for Patch was asked to repeatedly do back flips for a whole 6 hours before they found the perfect shot. Apparently he felt no need to work out for the rest of the week because that shoot was exercise enough! At first, the cover for Hush, Hush was actually the other way round, which if you think about it makes a lot more sense since Patch was supposed to be falling from heaven. At the request of a book store, the cover art was rotated 180 degrees and whilst it is still very cool, Patch appears to be falling upwards, which of course, is impossible - but then again, he is a fallen angel.
Some of the Hush, Hush characters are infact based on real people. For example, Marcie Millar is based on a mean girl who used to pick on Becca at school and made it her life's mission to humiliate her. However, Nora is not based on Becca Fitzpatrick and her friends have told her that they have absolutely nothing in common, apart from the curly hair. Patch was supposed to the ultimate bad boy and was based on a boy that Becca once knew (she tried to look him up on Facebook but alas could not find him). One of the character's (sorry, I've forgotten which one!) was even named after one of her sister's ex-boyfriends. Upon reading the novel her sister called Becca up demanding an explanation, and then had to make a rather awkward call to her ex-boyfriend to explain that he'd been used in her sister's writing.
(SPOILERS) Now, the big question of the night was what's going to happen in the fourth and final book of the Hush, Hush series? For obvious reasons she couldn't give much away, but she did tell us that there's going to be a massive show down between two races and we'll learn a bit more about the archangels. Initially, Silence was supposed to be the last book of the series, but about half way through writing it, Becca realised that she had much more to say and decided she was going to write another. This was all kept very quiet at her agent's request, but earlier this month she was allowed to reveal the news. She's also intending to write another series after the end of Hush, Hush, but we are yet to be told what this new series will about.
The other big question was whether or not the series would be made into a movie. Becca confirmed that as of this moment there are no plans to make the Hush, Hush series into movies, but should the right director and the right actors come along then she might consider it. She stated that she wasn't even sure if she wanted the series to be made into films and I can see where she's coming from. She told us to imagine if we'd written a book and created a whole world with lots of different characters and someone came along and tried to put it onto the big screen. So many things could go wrong, if the movie wasn't exactly the way that she had envisioned her books then of course she would be left feeling very unhappy so it's understandable that an author would rather not sell her book rights.
 |
| ... just one more photo |
