On Wednesday, Rae Carson, Amelia Kahaney, and Mindy McGinnis stopped by our local independent bookstore, Joseph Beth, for the last stop on the Dark Days tour. I got to sit down and chat with them, and I had a front row seat at their panel.

Excited to have @WeHeartYA be the official event blogger for the #DarkDays tour stop at @JosephBethCincy!

— Pitch Dark Books (@PitchDarkBooks) October 7, 2013

Helloooooo, Cincinnati! Don't tell Columbus, but you seem way more happening. #betrayal #pitchdarkdays

— Rae Carson (@raecarson) October 9, 2013

In their own words, each author explained what their book is about:

“The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy is a high fantasy trilogy in the tradition of Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. Lots of adventuring, magic, quests, destiny, prophesy, and all that fun stuff. But instead of being like Jon Snow or Aragorn, my protagonist is more like Ugly Betty. She is underestimated at every turn, but she surprises people as the series progresses.” -  Rae Carson

“The Brokenhearted is an urban superhero story set in a fictional city called Bedlam where a river runs through the middle, dividing the rich from the poor. The protagonist is named Anthem Fleet, and she’s a very privileged high-school girl who is obsessed with ballet and dating the right guy. Then everything quickly falls apart. She falls for a different boy and descends from her highfalutin, privileged existence to go to the south side where things are rougher. The boy is kidnapped and she’s dispatched into a polluted river. When she’s saved from death by a mad scientist woman, she gets a new heart, and the heart has hummingbird DNA. The story is her trying to get her boyfriend back, and trying to understand her new body, and coming to terms with the fact that she’s this freakishly powerful person now.” - Amelia Kahaney

“Not a Drop to Drink is about an America thirty to forty years in the future where drinkable water is very rare. (Unfortunately, this is based on a documentary that I watched, so you might want to stock up!) The concept is that if you live in the city and you can afford water, you’ll have a fairly normal life. But most people can’t afford it, so the cities are emptying out. The people who live in the country have either a pond or a hand-dug well and have their own water resources. At the age of nine, my protagonist Lynn’s mother hands her a gun and says, 'You’re going to have to kill to defend the pond.' So she grows up this way, killing to protect their water source, so the two of them can live. Her mother is the only person she’s ever spoken to her entire life until about the age of sixteen or seventeen — she honestly not sure how old she is — and things start to change. She has to figure how to adapt to being human and less of this feral thing she’s been raised to be, and learn how live as opposed to just survive.” - Mindy McGinnis

If you follow us on Twitter, you might have caught our live-tweets from the event. But in case you missed it, here they are again, showcasing the humor and intelligence of these awesome ladies:

"I don't like to base characters on real people. That gets real tricky real quick." @MindyMcGinnis #pitchdarkdays

— We Heart YA (@weheartya) October 9, 2013

"I just want to get to a place where kickassedness is more multidimensional without being sexualized." @akahaney #pitchdarkdays

— We Heart YA (@weheartya) October 9, 2013

"I sit down and I write. That's pretty much what happens." @MindyMcGinnis when asked about her writing process #pitchdarkdays

— We Heart YA (@weheartya) October 9, 2013

"I have two notes on my laptop. One says 'Open the document' and the other says 'It's supposed to be fun.'" @akahaney #pitchdarkdays

— We Heart YA (@weheartya) October 9, 2013

"Have hope and keep fighting." @akahaney on what the message behind her book is. #pitchdarkdays

— We Heart YA (@weheartya) October 9, 2013