Rachel's Dark Days Tour NYC Recap (+ Giveaway!)

On February 18th, we attended the Dark Days Tour Event at the 92Y in New York City. This tour featured four authors: Kiersten White (author of Perfect Lies and the Paranormalcy series), Veronica Rossi (author of the Under the Never Sky series), Sophie Jordan (author of Uninvited and the Firelight series), and Tahereh Mafi (author of the Shatter Me series). Since Megan, Katherine, and I are big fans of all of these authors, attending this event was a no-brainer for us.

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As if these authors aren't awesome enough, Ransom Riggs (author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) was there to moderate the event. He's a cool guy and a great author, so I was excited about his addition to the Dark Days Team.

Since the event is run by HarperTeen, the lovely ladies of Epic Reads were in attendance. (Margot and Aubry run the Epic Reads website, and they do weekly Tea Time livestreams.) We saw them briefly before the event started and planned on finding them afterward to talk to them and get a picture, but they ended up leaving before we'd gotten a chance to say hi. :( Oh, well. Next time!

Everyone in the audience received an Epic Reads *book shimmy* tote bag with some Harper ARCs, which was so cool!

TERRIBLE PICTURE QUALITY FTW!

Each person got different books, so everyone was trading with each other. There was an awesome guy in front of me who turned around and said, "Hey, do you want these? I already have them, so just take them..." and kind of shoved them into my hands and I was like, "OKAY IF YOU INSIST. *GRABS BOOKS*" After doing some giving away and switching of ARCs with Katherine and Megan, I ended up with two ARCs I'm really excited to read, so that was a pleasant surprise. FREE BOOKS! *book shimmies*

Waiting for the event to start! (Katherine, Megan, Rachel, Lauren)

Ransom Riggs did an awesome job moderating the event, and I was impressed with how comfortable he was on stage. He has such a great sense of humor and asked really thoughtful questions, so I'm glad he was chosen to moderate the event. Also, he and Tahereh Mafi are absolutely adorable together. (They're married, just in case you don't know. :P)

The event was really fun and entertaining. I've always thought that authors are a truly hilarious bunch, and these women (and Ransom!) are no exception. They're all really funny and also incredibly smart.

Before the event! (I had grand plans to snap pics while the authors were talking, but they asked everyone to not take pictures. What can ya do??)

The event was live-streamed, and you can watch the recorded version here.

Off the top of my head, here are some highlights from the event:

• When asked what actors Tahereh would cast in a movie adaptation of her book, Tahereh said "Justin Bieber" and Kiersten added "as Juliette." Tahereh went on to say that her mom would play Warner. (I WOULD PAY A LOT OF MONEY TO SEE THIS MOVIE.)
• Tahereh apparently used to break-dance with her brothers when she was younger. Kiersten was especially amused by this, and now plans on writing her next YA novel about break-dancing. (For the record, I'd totally read that book.)
• In Kiersten's teen journal entries, she always asked "does this boy like me?" but "spoiler alert: no he does not"
• When Ransom began to ask Kiersten a question, she just stopped him and said, "If it's about math, I don't know." (I FEEL YA, GURL. I FEEL YA.)
• Sophie told the story of her inspiration for Uninvited, which involves a little boy named Timmy who may or may not grow up to be a serial killer.
• And lots of other things that I can't think of at this particular moment. Just go watch the video! It's super interesting/entertaining.

After the Q&A was over, it was time for the signing! While waiting in line, we freaked out about how cool the authors are, tried to balance our massive stacks of books, and made a new friend. (Hi Madison!) When we actually met the authors, I ended up not being able to say anything intelligent to them due to the fact that I was TOO EXCITED TO COMMUNICATE USING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. But it's all good. The authors were all so nice and cool, and they were thanking ME for coming to see them, which was funny because I was all, "uh, thank YOU for writing these freaking awesome books."

I got all of these beauties signed. :D

Overall, it was an exciting, hectic night. The whole event is a bit of a blur, to be honest. There are so many things I wanted to do (tell the authors how much I love their books in a normal and intelligent way, meet the Epic Reads girls, etc.) but I ended up just doing a lot of wide-eyed "I'M SO EXCITED I CAN'T EVEN FORM WORDS" staring around the room.

We ended up with a few extra copies of some of the Dark Days books, so we decided to get them signed and do a giveaway. We've never done giveaways on the blog before, due to the fact that we are broke teenagers, but we can swing it this time, so we're very happy to announce that we'll be giving away a signed copy of Perfect Lies by Kiersten White and a signed copy of Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi.

Some rules:

• US/Canada only. (Sorry everyone else! See above "we are broke teenagers" statement.)
• You can enter both giveaways, but if you win both, we will ask you to choose one of the books and then we'll do another drawing to give the other away. (Also, if you win both, I will politely request that you transfer your awesome luck to me.)
• After we contact the winner, you will have one week to respond. If we don't hear from you after a week, we'll have to pick a new winner.
• The giveaway will end at 12:00 a.m. EST on March 31st.

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