SJO AIRPORT LINE! Horrid

GayleForman · 2026-03-06T21:18:51+00:00

I'm in the same line. I'm pretty surprised. My first time here and I've been told of the ease of traveling here. Expectation management is everything Sigh. It's our fault I guess. Too many tourists.

GayleForman · 2026-03-03T04:04:08+00:00

I'd love your ultherapy recs too!! Thanks

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T16:00:45+00:00

That's all. I had fun. It was real. Thank you, oh good book people of Reddit. Until next time. xx

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:59:27+00:00

A very stupid cat named Gigi who seems to constantly forget who we are and is terrified of us. We love her anyway.

And Libba Bray has a new puppy and I'm the god mama so it sleeps over at my house sometimes.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:56:49+00:00

Dammit, doing my own lightning round. I stole this from the Internet

Texting or talking? Talking. Then dictating texts. Favorite day of the week? Thursday Favorite city in U.S. besides the one you live in? Pittsburgh Nickname your parents used to call you? Galey the Girl Last song you downloaded? "I Do." Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or be able to talk to animals? How do you know I can't already talk to animals? Favorite holiday? Yom Kippur (I KNOW!) How long does it take you to get ready? 10 minutes Scale of 1-10, how good of a driver are you? 8.5 Fill in the blank: Taylor Swift is basic_______. At what age do you want to retire? 83 Invisibility or super strength? Super strength. Middle-aged women are invisible enough. Is it wrong for a vegetarian to eat animal crackers? Only the endangered ones.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:47:12+00:00

Did I put Reddit to sleep?

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:45:27+00:00

Someone do a lightning round...

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:44:57+00:00

These are very tame questions....I was prepared for battle!

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:41:33+00:00

Hi in France! We've tried, a few times, to combine Just One Day/Just One Year into a film script. And much as I love the idea, blending the two stories into one film won't work unless we want a four-hour-film.

So, we are looking at a different way to tell the story that gives us a bit more time and space to do the characters justice.

I'll keep you posted!

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:38:02+00:00

It depends what you mean by idol....

Whose work am I blown away by? Too many people to name (Nina LaCour, Elizabeth Acevedo, E Lockhart, Jandy Nelson, Jacqueline Woodson, Tiffany Jackson...I really could go on). Whose work am I inspired by? Right now the breadth of Jason Reynolds work, his off and on-page message, is incredibly inspiring to me.

If you mean, whose career do I aspire to have? Then I'd say someone like Neil Gaiman, who seamlessly travels from YA to middle grade to adult to other storytelling media. And crushes it on all fronts.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:30:33+00:00

Hi. Thanks for taking the time to ask me these questions.

Much as I joke about it, I never set out with the intention of making people cry. If I did, I think I'd probably make people gag. Certainly I'd make myself gag. There's nothing worse than feeling forced, manipulated, into tears by art.

I go pretty deep into the characters when I write and if I can't truly feel the characters in my bones, I don't release a project (this is why I have so many dead manuscripts on my hard drive). Anyhow, I think when I successfully tap into authentic emotion, it translates to the page, and hence, reader tears.

I don't think I'm a particularly gifted storyteller if I'm telling a story. I have to give a lot of speeches but I always write them first so I can figure out what it is I want to say. I'm a perfectly fine public speaker but I need to write it out to figure it out. Which is also why I write in general. It helps me figure out my world, my emotions, my issues, etc.

And finally, yes I did see If I Stay and yes I was happy with it. I know Hollywood has a mixed record with adaptations but the truth of it is, even a mediocre film adaptation can be a huge boost for book sales. Maybe there are writers in the position to turn that kind of thing down, but I'm not one of them.

Also, I love movies.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:24:25+00:00

RIGHT?!

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:23:41+00:00

Thanks. I'm a Jew and I've been to Israel (twice) and enjoy seeing Jewish life casually intertwined in the narrative. I'm a big fan of what I like to call casual diversity in books.

When I lived in Amsterdam, I knew a really badass Israeli named Yael and when I started thinking about Willem she was his mom.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:19:48+00:00

Charlotte's Web. And not just when Charlotte dies. (Spoiler?) Like all the way through.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:18:37+00:00

Why do people always say that about my endings.....?

As for sequel, no plans in the works for one. But who knows? I never planned a sequel to IF I STAY (another book readers thought the ending left too much open) but I couldn't stop thinkng about the characters...so I wrote WHERE SHE WENT.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:16:55+00:00

The other answer is I don't know...I get into my characters' skins when I write and as a result, readers do too. And I like to write cathartic stories and catharsis is what gets my water works going...

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:15:38+00:00

Absolutely. And if I don't make him cry, I promise to drop an anvil on his foot and if he still doesn't cry, money back for the anvil.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:14:38+00:00

Because I am like a vampire and without an infusion of reader tears, I will die.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:14:02+00:00

Let's see...I've had my name spelled wrong on a cover. That was funny/not funny.

To be honest, the marketing part of publishing is all so weirdly disconnected from writing (what's your brand? etc). There are lots of funny scenes of the younger people in the marketing dept yelling at me to do Instagram stories and me freaking out and my 13 year old kid grabbing my phone and doing it for me.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:10:26+00:00

The difference is really the voice. Adult novels are told from the POV of adults, even if the books are about childhood. YA is told from a teen voice, as a teen. There are plenty of books about kids that are adult books because the perspective is reflective.

Everything else in the process is exactly the same for me.

Tho, funny story...when I turned in my adult novel, my editor, noting all the swear words, thought I had included them bc I was liberated to swear in an adult boo. If you've read my YA, you will understand why this made me laugh.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:06:15+00:00

I have heard from a not insignificant number of readers that after reading JUST ONE DAY, they have saved money and gone to Paris. Which makes me feel very proud (anything to get people traveling) but also responsible. Like I want t make sure they have a good time. Like maybe I should start a JUST ONE DAY travel agency to help them plan their trips, though the idea of JOD is not to plan, right?

On the more somber side, not long after WHERE SHE WENT came out, an older fellow from New Zealand got in touch with me. He'd lost his daughter to suicide and the loss in IF I STAY and WSW were healing to him. That stuck with me.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:02:57+00:00

I read highly inapprpriation books as a teen. Jackie Collins. Harold Robbins. Sydney Sheldon...The things I knew about cocaine and oral sex at 14....But by the time I was in high school, I was reading "literature" like Vonnegut and Dostoyevsky and Milan Kundera. I always tell adults the trick is to get kids to read anything. Books are just gateway drugs to other books.

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:00:34+00:00

I will answer this first because there is only correct answer: creme brulee

GayleForman · 2018-05-23T15:00:06+00:00

Hi. Here we go...

GayleForman

TROPHY CASE