Two stars of the YA book world joined a packed room of wildly enthusiastic fans at BookCon 2014 on the main event stage of the Javits Center in New York City on May 31 and gave the audience an experience, both delightful and memorable. While the premise was that Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series, would be kicking off Four, A Divergent Collection (HarperCollins, 2014; July 8), and Alex London would be introducing Guardian (Philomel, May 19), the second title in his “Proxy” series, the 60 minute conversation quickly veered into a discussion that included the nature of friendship, author obsessions, and waffle toppings.
Roth’s readers, who seemed to have entire passages of her books memorized, audibly groaned when London posed the question “Why do we do horrible things to the people (characters) that we love?” Roth likened it to letting your child learn how to skateboard—”If you never let them skate again after the first time they fall and hurt themselves, they’ll never learn on to do it.” London added “You can’t learn how to heal if you’ve never been hurt.”
Roth and London agreed that friendship is at the base of all the relationships they build in their books. When discussing their top friendships in books, London cited that between Austin and Robbie in Andrew Smith’s recently released title, Grasshopper Jungle (Dutton, 2014), while Roth cited Harry and Hermione’s friendship from J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, which elicited loud cheers from the crowd.
Their writer quirks? Roth felt that “sighing and glancing” seemed to take up quite of bit of her characters’ time, and admitted to editing out at least four instances of “electric kisses.” London confessed that if a human actually did as much shrugging and eye-rolling as his characters do “their retinas would detach.”
The conversation included flawed endings (in the original manuscript of Proxy, Syd was a soldier in a clone army) and inspirations (Roth’s fascination with the potions class in Harry Potter and The Philospher’s Stone led to the serums used in the “Divergent” series), a comparison of dystopian and cyberpunk fiction, and the revelation that both Roth and London began writing when just 11 years old.
In response to a question from the audience—”If you were a Belgian waffle, what kind of topping would you want?”
London and Roth on the big screen
Roth first said she would only like a light dusting of powdered sugar “plain, with just a bit of sweetness,” while London admitted that he would want each individual square filled with maple syrup, which—judging from the response from the floor—was clearly a crowd favorite. The session closed with thunderous applause, hoots, and whistles from the predominantly teen audience.
This year was the first-ever BookCon, which was featured as the place “where storytelling and pop culture collide,” according to its website. The event invited the consumer marketplace to interact with publishers and authors that were previously only accessible to attendees of BookExpo America, North America’s largest publishing show sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, and Association of Authors Representatives.