I was able to attend a book tour event for Ransom Riggs’ novel, The Map of Days. This novel is an additional trilogy from the Peculiar Children series. The second trilogy follows the same stories and characters. This series is about a boy named Jacob, who after a tragedy, discovers pieces of his grandfather’s past and comes across an orphanage which houses children with unique abilities. The series involves time travel and most of the first three novels take place in a locations in the past such as Wales and London. The fourth novel takes place after a big adventure and victory–another journey begins, but this time, it takes place in America, where Jacob lives.
I like this series because of the way it realistically portrays grief. I came across this series when I was going through a loss of my own and related to Jacob. The novels taught me an important lesson: I was able to learn that although grief is a difficult process, I realized that is possible to allow a piece of the person to live through myself. Grief also brings out strength that I initially did not realize was possible.
I love hearing authors talk about their craft. As a writer who is a little bit newer to writing manuscripts, I personally have a sort of dissonance between speaking out loud versus writing: I find writing to be much easier and more natural. But when I hear authors speak, their words flow out as well as they do on paper.
I am in the process of my own project and find that hearing authors discuss their work motivates me as a creator. It also makes me want to get better at talking about my own work. The event was well-organized and there was a great audience too. The staff filmed most of the event. Although the event was later in the day, and I got home maybe at 11p.m. or so (I’m not much of a night owl), it was certainly worth the trip! I never thought I’d get the opportunity to meet Ransom Riggs in person and was happy that I got to thank him for writing this series.
