First Draft Episode #245: Veronica Roth

Veronica Roth, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series, the Carve the Mark duology, and the short story collection, The End and Other Beginnings, talks about her first adult fantasy novel, The Chosen Ones.

This episode was sponsored by HIGHLAND 2, a better way to write, and by didnt-ask-for-this.html">We Didn’t Ask For This, the newest novel by Adi Alsaid, out from Inkyard Press April 7 (listen to his First Draft interview here).

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• Hear Veronica’s previous First Draft interviews: Just prior to the Insurgent movie being released, and as Carve the Mark was being released

• Katherine Tegen, publisher of Katherine Tegen Books, published Veronica’s young adult fictoin

• Alice Munro, author of Dear Life, Runaway, and Too Much Happiness

• Me and cooking can be summed up in the Netflix series Nailed It

• Some chosen one stories that were particularly influential to Veronica were Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling; Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; Animorphs by KA Applegate, Narnia by C.S. Lewis; The Giver by Louis Lowry; and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

• The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe

• All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

• Adam Brody of The O.C.

• My most recent interview with Zan Romanoff, whose newest book, Look, is fantastic!

• MK Ultra, the government’s mind-control experimentation

• blue-book-history-true-story.html">Project Blue Book, the top-secret government UFO coverup

• The audiobook of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

• “as-coronavirus-spreads-publishers-struggle-with-when-and-how-to-move-pub-dates.html">As Coronavirus Spreads, Publishers Struggle with When, and How, to Move Pub Dates,” the Publisher’s Weekly article about publishers deciding when to move publication dates in light of COVID-19

• The list of virtual events for Veronica’s The Chosen Ones virtual tour

• Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief by David Kessler

I want to hear from you!

Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998.

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent; Linda Holmes, author and host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast; Jonny Sun, internet superstar, illustrator of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! and author and illustrator of Everyone’s an Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too;  Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender; John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; or Rhett Miller, musician and frontman for The Old 97s. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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