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Go To the Bookstore With V.E. Schwab, Bestselling Author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Authors always get asked where they get their ideas, but another popular area of curiosity for readers is how, exactly, does an author write?

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New York Times bestselling author V.E. Schwab sat down to discuss her writing process—like what drink she likes to keep by her side as she types—and what she does to keep her word count ticking upwards.

“I like to create every day or sit with my work every day,” she says, “because it helps keep that creative door open.” For an even deeper dive into a book’s journey, be sure to check out a conversation between Schwab and her long-time editor, Miriam Weinberg.

An independent bookstore is a key location in her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, so you might pine for the days of in-store browsing when you hear Schwab describe her perfect afternoon amid stacks of books and perhaps find some new ways to expand your own TBR pile. But of course, we did still want to know where she got the idea for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. It begins with a children’s story about a boy who can never grow up…

All about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue:

Meet the heroine Neil Gaiman calls “delightfully unforgettable.”

In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, Villains series, Monster of Verity duology, Cassidy Blake series and the upcoming The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her work has received critical acclaim and been featured in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Washington Post and more, translated into more than two dozen languages, and has been optioned for television and film. When she’s not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.

Don’t forget to check out the other excellent additions in our exclusive Our Books, Our Shelves column with Tor Books!

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Kaila Hale-Stern
Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

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