A spoiler free summary of Victoria Aveyard's Talk and Book Signing!
I was lucky enough to meet Victoria Aveyard on her Liverpool stop of her UK Red Queen Tour! She was promoting her collectors edition of Red Queen and gave a talk on everything from how Pokemon inspired the powers of protagonists Mare and Cal to how she feels the way society is socialised may have limited people's impressions of her books. It was an honour to hear Aveyard speak, she was a funny and intelligent lady with a wild imagination and it was clear she inspired myself and many other young minds in the room.
There was a hum of chatter as all the fans awaited her entrance but as soon as she neared silence fell as the moment we were all anticipating arrived! Seated in front of the small crowd, Aveyard was initially interviewed by Lucy Richardson, who was clearly as big of a fan as anyone else in the room, before a Q&A session with the audience. An imaginative and creative author, Aveyard discussed being a visual writer. She explained how the first idea for Red Queen popped into her head as an image of a girl about to be executed who then electrocutes her executioner and evades her impending death. She was intrigued by this story and decided to explore it. Usually a screenwriter, Aveyard felt this narrative wouldn't work on screen and set about writing a novel. Red Queen was born and Victoria spoke of how she loved world building and enjoys drawing fantasy maps in her spare time. Initially, the series was to be 3 books but Victoria felt she couldn't reach an ending in King's Cage and so the fandom eagerly awaits the fourth and final instalment in which she has promised even more plot twists, which she is renowned for. (I still haven't recovered to be honest). The most shocking thing Aveyard revealed was that in her first draft of Red Queen, Mare's brother's power was initially going to be time travel but it was going to impact the story too greatly and so she was advised by her editor to change it and so Shade's power became teleportation.
With an evil laugh, she revealed to us she has never been afraid to kill off characters, as long as their deaths aid the story, drawing parallels between the death of Dumbledore and Obe-Wan Kenobi and how the death of a mentor allows character development. Victoria also discussed with us how she loves a strong female character, revealing her favourite to be Sansa Stark, who she is a self-confessed 'stan' of! This led her on to explain how Game of Thrones has inspired the fantasy side of the series, which was probably inevitable considering how big of a fan she is. Relating to the nerds in the room (myself included) when questioned about how she came up with the powers for her characters, Aveyard excitedly told us she was inspired by Pokemon, referring to Mare as Pikachu and Cal as a Charmaleon. She was also eager to talk about LGBT representation and how she hopes to add to a more diverse narrative in YA literature, something she hopes she's always improving on. Aveyard also acknowledged that the way society is socialised has led to a potentially narrower audience of readers as sometimes boys are reluctant to pick up her books that perhaps appear more feminine. She doesn't however feel limited by being marketed as a YA author as she sees her audience is vast due to the many themes she covers, such as fascism, oppressive class systems, terrorism and war, all relevant to our world despite being set in a dystopian fantasy world.
A final piece of advice for aspiring authors in the audience was to always finish a draft! Aveyard assured us that it is far harder to complete a perfect first draft than to just draft all of your ideas and edit it after. She advised making notes of what you want to improve later and also warned against trying to mirror another author's journey to publishing. She ended her talk warmly thanking us for coming and then patiently met every fan and signed everyone's stack of books, happy to answer any extra questions and take pictures. An incredibly smart author and a lovely lady!
Visit Victoria's website: https://www.victoriaaveyard.com/ and follow her on twitter
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