Book Event

I was able to attend an event hosted by Mysterious Galaxy, where David Ferraro, the author of The Alchemy of Moonlight, talked to Devin Greenlee about his newest release, Evergreen.

It was a cute conversation, and how both authors interacted made me feel like I was in a coffee shop, sitting in while they conversed.

Evergreen is a retelling of Rapunzel. During the conversation, Devin discussed how hard it was to decide how much to drift from the real story, but he feels he gave the best of all worlds. Without giving any spoilers, it is 75% romance, and then the whole story takes a turn.

Devin is known for writing books in six weeks; once, he even wrote a book in eleven days, although it was a mess. After he wrote this book, he was ready to self-publish it, but one of his friends convinced him to go the traditional route and find an agent, which worked!

Devin Greenlee expressed how he felt writing has been a part of his life and gave some cute stories about his journey with writing. One was how he combined efforts in middle school with a friend who loved manga, and they then created something together.

Devin Greenlee went on to explain how when he was growing up, he craved queer books, and the only one he found for the longest time was Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez. It made him sad how hard it was to find books he could identify with, so he decided to write what he couldn’t find when he got older. He hates how now queer books are being taken away and believes that adults need to give as much info as possible to guide lgbtqia+ kids through situations and expresses how he doesn’t get it because they will find that information anyway.

He lastly went into the process of how he writes books. Interestingly, he has a song playlist he has been working on for fifteen years that is ten hours long that he uses not just for writing but also for relaxing and sleeping. He also writes in waves. At first, he writes out the dialogue and the bare bones, and then he will go in and add the more flowy prose and emotions.

This was a very insightful conversation with many thanks to Mysterious Galaxy!