Kristina's World of Books: Never Eighteen Launch Party

Never Eighteen

By Megan Bostic

Tacoma Library

January 17th 2012

The event started with a meet and great, buying books and eating some food and awesome cookies. There was some issues with the snow and getting the books that were to be sold to the library. There ended up being a limited number of books (2 boxes, her stock) and each person got a number (some a few numbers) to count off how many books they were to buy.

After the initially meet and great the schedule got changed around and Megan started signing books so that people could leave early due to the bad weather.

After almost everyone got their books signed and many people were there the book presentation started. The librarian introduced Megan and told a little bit about her. Megan took the stage (figuratively) and had a speech prepared to thank people for coming, family, friends and the rest of the support group for her writing.

After Megan's speech we got to have the book trailer shown to us.

Next we got to listen to reading of a chapter in the book. This was the first time I have ever seen two people reading in dialogue at a book event. Originally a younger boy was going to voicing Austin, but due to the snow a last minute replacement had to be found. Austin's replacement ended up being a librarian who is an actor and taught at a school.

To wrap up we were able to do some Q&A for Megan before the actually signing line started.
(answers are summarized)

What was your influence to start writing?

Megan started writing after her mother in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer and they said she had a few months to live but only lived for a few weeks. Because Megan was grieving she wrote to cope with her loss. Her first story was a super hero story, but she isn't sure if that will ever be published. Megan ended up writing Never Eighteen during NaNoWriMO (National November Writers Month). Originally the title was called Mending Fences and the book went through 15 revisions before it ended in its final state. Megan received a call when she was in Disneyland that she was getting a book deal to be published.

How much changed from the first to the final draft?

A lot changed actually. Originally the characters were adult aged, but since the book was going to be for teens and teen don't like to typically read about adult characters they went to being teenagers. Another chunk was taken out because the publisher said Austen didn't need to learn all the other characters secrets.

Who would you cast for your characters?

Austen: Aaron Johnson (from Kick Ass)

Kaylee: Amanda Seyfried

Even though your book is in your local home town did you have to do any research?

Yes, since Megan had never been to the Space Needle (many locals haven't) she went with her husband and kids and they went to the top and had lunch. They also went to the EMP (Experience Music Project) as well. With the falls she ended up redoing the description because she didn't remember it all.

What is your writing style?

Megan just learned recently that she can call herself a "panser", she thrives on organized chaos as long as she has pen, paper and sticky notes she has everything in her head and just goes where the story takes her. Megan likes to write a lot of description, dialog and internal thoughts, she finds the other stuff boring.

Do you write with messages in mind?

To live life. You never know when it will all be gone. Reach out to others that are hurting.

Next work?

Working on getting her next book published called Sliced, a story of love, loathing and cutting.

The event ended with the last people getting there books signed and people mingling and talking. There was 3 raffles, 2 copies of the book and a goodie basket filled with lots of cool things. Sadly I didn't win. The event was a lot of fun and I'm glad the streets were clear enough to allow for the event to still proceed.

I went to the event having not read the book yet, but after the event I was even more interested since they were handing out little tissues. I read Never Eighteen the day after and yes I used those tissues, they are completely necessary when reading this book.