(October 27, 2011) — A crowd of people flood the doorway as a trio of authors take their seats at the front of Once Upon a Time bookstore in Montrose. Elizabeth Miles, Moira Young and Becca Fitzpatrick recently attended a book signing on Oct 6. Though the three young adult novelists are new authors, their books seem to have a great impact on the way teenagers think about their lives. Junior Rasha Dandachi said she can relate to the characters. “I feel like the people in the books are a part of me, kind of like a sister or a brother,” Dandachi said. Fitzpatrick said during this book signing event that when she wrote her book, it was for the sake of the story and she did not look closely at the implications or deeper meanings. “I don’t think deeply about my books. I write them to entertain,” Fitzpatrick told the audience. “But as a child, I went to Sunday school and you know the kinds of crazy stories about angels they tell. But I didn’t want my book to be just about regular angels, I wanted it to be about fallen angels,” The first book in a trilogy, Hush Hush is set in the typical high school environment with Nora, the main character, and her gradual love interest, Patch. While they become closer to each other Nora finds that there’s more to the world than the eye can see and she has to figure out how to save herself from being pulled into the mess that’s brewing under the false pretense of high school. “I get a lot of my characters from the people I know. Patch came from one of my friends in high school, I got the idea of Nora from another friend of mine. I just pull out the personalities of people I know and use them to create these characters,” Fitzpatrick said. Author Moira Young believes that characters are the part of you that you would only see in dreams. “People are multifaceted and I think that’s what makes stories like Blood Red Road. And essentially its just an extension of yourself; stepping out of your boundaries to something more than what you are,” Young said. Recent tour dates for Fitzpatrick include book signings from October 18-27, around the US, UK, and Canada. A full list of locations is available on her website, www.beccafitzpatrick.com . Miles and Young have not yet released any information on upcoming tour dates. For more information on their books, you can visit their websites at www.elizabethmilesbooks.com and authors.simonandschuster.com/Moira-Young. Another book signing on Oct. 21 introduced Maggie Stiefvater and her most recent book, Forever. Dandachi said, “I feel like the book is real. The characters are real, the story is real; when you read it, you want it to be real, you want to get to know the characters in person.” Steifvater admits that in the beginning, her story was supposed to be from the main characters (Grace’s) point of view and that Sam, Grace’s love interest was accidentally introduced as one of the main characters. “Originally, it was all from Grace’s point of view; Sam wasn’t really a big part of the story, and I’m not a big fan of romance novels where the girl asks herself if the boy of her dreams likes her or not, but I found that Sam had to be there to explain how he felt about Grace.” Stiefvater said that when she writes a book, it’s kind of like taking a road trip. She knows what’s going to happen in the beginning, the middle, and the end. “I have these points laid out to get to and I kind of meander any which-way and I stop along the way, pick up some ideas, and move on from where I left off.” Stiefvater also has an extensive play list of songs to listen to when she writes her stories to help her focus solely on the characters and the emotions. She said that she mostly listened to Celtic music while writing the Shiver trilogy because it was so emotional and ambiguous. “The reason I listen to music so much when I write a book is so I can set myself in the mood of the story, and I try to keep my own emotions out of the story, because if I’m writing a sad scene and I feel happy, it just doesn’t work out. So I listen to music that corresponds with the emotions of the scene I’m writing,” she said. Stiefvater is currently working on another book that won’t be released until 2012, but you can read many of her short stories and collaborations on The Merry Sisters of Fate at www.merryfates.com . More information about Stiefvater or any of her other books and tour dates are listed on www.maggiestiefvater.com .