‘BeReal’with &Denard

Alexandra Bracken is a New York Times Bestselling Author of many novels including The DarkestMindsSeries,Passenger, Wayfair,Lore , and now Silver in the Bone. Susan Dendard is also a New York Times Bestselling author of the Blood Witch Series who happens to be close friends with Bracken.

Through this two-hour-long event the audience got to learn all the inside secrets about the making of Bracken newest book and her other most popular releases. This tour started on April 4th, 2023 and ended on April 15th, 2023. Her tour locations are as follows: Plainville, MA, Fairfax, VA, Nashville, TN, Decatur, GA, Naperville, IL, Vernon Hills, IL, Frisco, TX, Houston, TX, Orem, UT, Los Angeles, CA, and Phoenix, AZ.

Many of these tour dates were conversations with other popular Young Adult Authors includ- ing Holly Black, Susan Denard, Patrice Coldwell, J. Elle, and Victoria Aveyard. I was lucky enough to attend the event with Susan Denard.

As I arrived with my sister Noelle and one of my good friends Heather, we were sparkling with excitement.

Heather, Noelle, and I had met Bracken on a different occasion during her novel release of The DarkestLegacy so we were excited to be a part of yet another one of her events.

Heather is studying to be an English teacher at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana because she has always had a connection to stories of all kinds. Since she was a kid, she has always loved to read and write. For the past few years she has been working on her own novel.

“I hope to publish my manuscript someday,” said Heather. “It’s my dream to teach literature but it’s my calling to be a published author.”

She added.

Noelle has been an on and off avid reader for as long as I can remember. She has always enjoyed a good audiobook and has recently gotten deep into the fantasy genre.

“Alex’s past books have been great but now that she is writing a new fantasy book, I am so ready to dive in,” Noelle said.

There were people everywhere looking around and shopping before the event had started.

A few minutes later, a line started to form in the back so we hopped in it to wait for the authors to come out.

At these kinds of book events, the ticket comes with a copy of the book and the opportunity to get it signed at the end. One of the workers at Anderson’s Bookshop started to ask for names and passed out books. As she passed out books, we met a few other fans in line.

Andrea was the first person I introduced myself to. She is from Naperville and regularly attends Anderson Bookshop. She told me all about her love for the reading community and Alexandra Bracken’s writing.

She said, “I absolutely love being able to live in a place where I am lucky enough to get to attend all the book tours that come through here. I have met Alex three times now and I always love her events.”

Andrea is such a huge fan that she brought a stack of books by her that are yet to be signed so that they can be. She also knows Susand Denard and is an avid fan of hers.

She states that she loved the Blood Witch series and absolutely adores Denard as a person. She has followed all her book releases as they have come about.

There were so many others like her at this event. I even got to meet Liviy, the author of Bracken’s Wiki Page for her book Lore . These pages are fan run but the creators do a lot to manage and complex all the information known about the novel.

“Lore is my all-time favorite book,” said Liviy.

“From the first page I knew this book would destroy me”.

She decided to attend this event because she had never had the opportunity to meet her in the past. Her excitement was contagious about Lore and she was hoping to get some of her unanswered questions answered at this event.

As we all sit down in the audience, we are all ready to listen and ask questions. The authors came out and a roar of applause ripped through the small audience. The two authors sat in the very front of the audience and began with descriptions of their latest books.

Since Bracken and Denard are so close the conversation was so funny to follow along with. They met through their writing and went on many trips dedicated to brainstorming and developing their current books in a new environment.

Most of their conversation in the first segment was about writing craft. Many audience members asked questions about motivation and drive to write as an author on deadline.

Burn out is easy with creative intensive jobs so finding a reset is a must.

Next they took a lot of audience questions. A few questions had to do with Bracken selling the rights to a Lore movie and how she wrote this new novel. A few secrets into her process and lots of sneak peeks into the book were shared. This open conversation with Bracken and Denard was lots of fun and was filled with many great answers to audience questions.

After the conversation we all lined up to get to speak with these amazing authors one-on-one and get our new books signed. When my group walked up, Bracken took our books and immediately recognized us from our last visit.

She asked us how old we were now and what we have been up to. It was so heartwarming to know that she remembers her fans and makes a huge effort to get to know them as best she can.

Each person that came up also got free prints from Bracken and a free signed map from Denarad.

Book events are always so great to attend because you learn so much and get to make relationships with all the people that love the same thing you do. I highly encourage every book lover to try and attend these kinds of events for their favorite authors because it will surely be a day to remember.