Podcasts I listened to obsessively, which inspired me to start this podcast, include Fresh Air with Teri Gross, WTF with Marc Maron, and You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes

Kayla Cagan, author of Piper Perish and Art Boss (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Will Hines, author of How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth (hear his First Draft episode here)

Sara Farizan, author of Here to Stay, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, If You Could Be Mine (hear her First Draft interview here)

Kass Morgan, author of The 100 series and Light Years (stay tuned for her episode of First Draft!)

Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Beasts Made of Night, Crown of Thunder, and War Girls series

Tochi recommends playing narrative video games, like God of War, Assassin's Creed, or Red Dead Redemption

Leigh Bardugo, author of the Shadow and Bone series and Six of Crows duology, and the forthcoming adult novel, Ninth House , and more (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here)

Josh Gondelman, author of the forthcoming memoir Nice Try, writer and producer of “Desus and Mero” and Emmy-winning writer for “Last Week Tonight on John Oliver” (hear his First Draft interview soon!)

Maris Kreizman, author of Slaughterhouse 90210 and host of LitHub’s The Maris Review podcast

Ryan Graudin, author of the Wolf by Wolf, Invictus, The Walled City, and more (hear her First Draft interview here)

Sabriel by Garth Nix

Jason Reynolds, author of Look Both Ways, the Track series, Long Way Down, As Brave As You, All American Boys, and many more (stay tuned for his episode of First Draft)

The New Yorker

The Newberry Award; The National Book Award; The Pulitzer Prize

Stephanie Garber, author of the Caraval series (listen to her First Draft episode here)

Elana K. Arnold, author of A Boy Called Bat, Damsel, What Girls Are Made Of, Infandous, and more (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here)

Lance Rubin, author of Denton's Little's Deathdate, Denton's Little's Still Not Dead, and Crying Laughing (listen to his First Draft episode here)

Freedom (computer app)

Deep Work Work by Cal Newport

Courtney Summers, including Sadie, Cracked Up to Be, This Is Not a Test, Fall for Anything, All the Rage, Some Girls Are (hear her First Draft episodes here and here)

“Real Romance,” The New Yorker profile about Nora Roberts

Mary H. K. Choi, author of Emergency Contact and Permanent Record (stay tuned for her episode of First Draft)

The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia) and Dia:Beacon

Bridget Tyler, author of The Pioneer and The Survivor (listen to her First Draft episode here)

Scientific American, which Veronica just subscribed to

Samantha Mabry, author of A Fierce and Subtle Poison and All the Wind in the World (listen to her First Draft episode here)

Elissa Sussman, author of Stray and Burn (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Abdi Nazemian, author of Like a Love Story, The Authentics, and The Walk-In Closet (listen to his First Draft interview here)

Madonna, the queen of Abdi’s book

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Morgan Matson, author of he Date, Amy & Roger's Epic Detour, The Unexpected Everything, and more! (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here)

Julie Buxbaum, author of Tell Me Three Things, What to Say Next, and Hope and Other Punchlines (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Danielle Paige, author of Dorothy Must Die, Stealing Snow and Mera: Tidebreaker (listen to her First Draft episode here)

David Yoon, author of Frankly in Love (stay tuned for his episode of First Draft!)

Zan Romanoff, author of Look (due Spring 2020) and A Song to Take The World Apart and Grace and the Fever (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Writing Workshops LA

Francesca Lia Block, author of Weetzie Bat, The Thorn Necklace, and so many more (listen to her First Draft episode here)

Aminah Mae Safi, author of Not the Girls You're Looking For and Tell Me How You Really Feel (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Alex London, author of Black Wings Beating, Proxy, The Wild Ones series and more (listen to his First Draft episodes here and here)

Nina LaCour, author of We Are Okay, The Disenchantments, Everything Leads to You, Hold Still and more (hear her First Draft episodes here and here), and listen to Nina’s podcast, Keeping a Notebook

Hamline University’s MFA program

The Slow Novel Lab, Nina LaCour’s online course on writing

Lilliam Rivera, author of Dealing In Dreams and The Education Of Margot Sanchez, (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here)

Pseudonymous Bosch, aka Raphael Simon (author of the The Name of This Book is a Secret and the Bad Magic series, and more) and Shane Pangburn, who together created The Unbelievable Oliver and the Four Jokers (stay tuned for their First Draft episode!)

Amy Lukavics, author of Daughters into Devils and The Ravenous (listen to her First Draft episode here)

Maurene Goo, author of Somewhere Only We Know, I Believe in a Thing Called Love and The Way You Make Me Feel and Since You Asked (Listen to Maurene’s first, second, and third episodes of First Draft)

That time Maurene interviewed Sarah Enni for this podcast! (The Sarah Enni episode of First Draft )

Robin loved Diane Wynne Jones and Stephen King as a kid, particularly Salem’s Lot, The Stand, and It. (Robin wrote for The Atlantic about, “How Stephen King Saved My Life”)

Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer, about whom Robin would gladly talk about forever. (And I would listen!)

Robin wrote her senior thesis about Dr. Timothy Leary, who co-conducted studies known as the Psilocybin Project, which sought to test whether psychedelics could cure the emotional pain of Western man. Leary was fired from Harvard when the ethics of his studies came into question, and went on to continue promoting the use of psychedelics as a thought leader in the 60s counter-cultural movement. Leary has written extensively about his philosophy, including in books like The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, his book with his partner in the experiments, Richard Alpert* (now known as Ram Dass); his autobiography, Flashbacks; and Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. Many have written about him, including The Timothy Leary Project: Inside the Great Counterculture Experiment, compiled by the archivist Jennifer Ulrich; and Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In by Robert Forte.

• *Of interest to me is that the TV show LOST paid homage to Ram Dass by naming a character Richard Alpert

David Levithan, who has and does host a regular drinks night for New York authors of young adult fiction. Robin went to one of these gatherings and met John Green before Looking for Alaska won the Printz.

Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of Nirvana, the band that broke open grunge. Cobain died by suicide in 1994. If you’re interested in Cobain, or Nirvana, or the grunge scene generally, I personally recommend Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge by Mark Yarm, and the documentary Montage of Heck by Brett Morgen (about which Robin wrote, “The Art of Resurrection: Montage of Heck,” in the Los Angeles Times Review of Books).

The Satanic Panic was a phenomenon in the 1980s, wherein millions of Americans feared that an underground cult of Satan worshipers were practicing rituals and committing crimes. Robin particularly recommends Richard Beck’s We Believe the Children, which covers the phenomenon of, specifically, day care workers being charged with horrible accusations of child abuse. I’m obsessed with this phenomenon, and there are a ton of other podcasts that do a great job explaining it:

• For a broad overview, the Stuff You Should Know podcast released an episode about The Satanic Panic

• The Satanic Panic is a multi-part, deep dive into the phenomenon and many of the cases that came to define it (and their resources page isn’t to be missed)

• The McMartin Child Abuse trial was one of the most massive and egregious examples of the Satanic Panic as a community-seizing exercise of hysteria. Both WNYC’s The Takeaway and Generation Why have devoted episodes to exploring the case. Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane (whose most recent film, Hail Satan?, is awesome) went on KCRW’s The Document to discuss the case, and the phenomenon.

Robin was inspired, in part, by an event of mass hysteria that afflicted dozens (of mostly high school cheerleaders) in LeRoy, New York, a phenomenon covered in the New York Times and Slate. Robin wrote about the phenomenon for the Los Angeles Times Review of Books (“Girl Trouble”), which is a non-fiction piece on the history of hysteria and a review of The Fever by Megan Abbott. Another book written about that phenomenon is The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas (listen to Kara’s episodes of First Draft here and here).

The West Memphis Three was another case of hysteria leading to false convictions, in which three men in West Memphis, Arkansas were held responsible for the deaths of three young boys. The trial was controversial, and the three convicted men were released after serving more than 18 years in prison. The case is covered in a modern classic of documentary filmmaking, a trio of docs that begins with Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.

The concept of “kindred spirits” put forth by Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery led Robin to some dysfunctional concepts of female friendship as a young woman

Holly Black, who Robin calls “the queen of life modeling exercises” (listen to Holly Black’s First Draft episode here), asked her to write out what author she’d like to be. Robert Cormier and Neil Gaiman were among the many different answers to that question. Robin threw out that she’d like to be a cross between Michael Chabon and Joss Whedon.

What/If, the TV show that Robin wrote for, is now available to watch on Netflix!

Jonny remembers watching The Muppet Show as a kid (even though in some ways that really isn’t a kids show), and later he realized that was why he loved sketch comedy

Jonny loved reading Calvin and Hobbes as a kid, and he read a good amount of Charlie Brown, Zits, and The Far Side, all of which were comedy

The Wayside School books by Louis Sachar was Jonny’s intro into absurdist humor

He watched American Pie (movie) with his family, lol

Playwright David Ives, who Jonny calls the theater version of sketch comedy

Jonny played Nathan Detroit in a production of Guys and Dolls, and his best friend played Sky Masterson — Jonny’s best friend went on to perform with Second City and is now appearing in Come From Away in Toronto

Bruce Springsteen’s show, Springsteen on Broadway, is an interesting example of an artist engaging with works from every phase of their life

Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern and As Seen on Tumblr was part of a wave of books made from things that were funny on the internet

Winnie the Pooh is used as a reference for how Jonny structured Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn too like a social media site

Jonny recently gave a TED Talk!!!!

The Perry Bible Fellowship is a webcomic by Nicholas Gurewitch

He didn’t hesitate to illustrate Lin-Manuel Miranda’s book, Gmorning, Gnight! and he’d been a fan of Miranda’s plays, especially “In the Heights,” for years

Jonny made TinyCareBot after the 2016 election as a way to gently nudge himself to be kind to and take care of himself

I got the good NPR shirt, and the soup-sized mug, when I visited Linda to interview her at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Linda’s interview on The Hilarious World of Depression podcast

Television Without Pity, which became Previously.tv, which recently became PrimerTimer.com!

The Amazing Race was on the top of my mind when thinking about Television Without Pity

Again With This, a podcast hosted by Sarah D. Bunting and Tara Ariano, two of the founders of Television Without Pity, who do episode-by-episode recaps of Beverly Hills 90210

Stephen Thompson, one of Linda’s dear friends and co-workers, worked at The Onion before joining NPR

Linda’s writing was formerly hosted on the Monkey See blog at NPR, but that blog was sunsetted in favor of expanding the Pop Culture Happy Hour brand

Dancing with the Stars is now discussed on NPR, and that is largely due to Linda’s influence

All Songs Considered, the music-oriented NPR show and podcast that served as the inspiration for Pop Culture Happy Hour

Talk of the Nation, a live call-in show which had Linda on as a guest. She loved the spontaneity of participating in a live radio show

Linda had every intention of writing a book for National Novel Writing Month, alas her apartment flooded

Chuck Knoblauch throwing a baseball into the stands, hitting Keith Olbermann’s mother

If the yips interests you as much as it interests Linda, check out Field of Fear, a 30 for 30 mini-documentary

Before Sunrise is a movie that’s mostly talking, and is amazing, but Linda wanted Evvie Drake to have more action than that

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a TV show that brings Linda joy and is fun, but also is warm-spirited and compassionate

Audie Cornish gets a break from being a very serious NPR news reporter when she guests on Pop Culture Happy Hour

Linda uses Matt Damon growing potatoes in the film The Martian as a parable for the importance of art and culture in our lives

Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company reps Linda (hear Sarah Burnes’ episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni here)

Every listener should check out the first episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni with Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer, when we talked about her first novel, Layover

10 Things I Hate About You was shot at Stadium High School in Tacoma, Wash.

Shooting Trinkets on location in Portland, Ore. was a way to differentiate the show visually from glossier teen shows like Riverdale, and evoke classic teen shows like My So-Called Life

Awesomeness TV produced the show and helped shape the project into a TV show

Writer and artist Alex Israel was singing Amy and Emily’s praises to Kiwi for years before the three actually met

John McAlary, the casting director for Trinkets, said he saw 6,000 actors during the casting process for the show’s key roles

Seeing Trinkets star Brianna Hildebrand sing on her Instagram inspired Kiwi, Amy, and Emily to include singing as part of her character

Actor Katrina Cunningham, who plays Sabine in Trinkets, and is a performer as well and her music is featured in the show

Kiwi is currently writing “Party Girls” with long-time co-writer Karen McCullah

End of the Fucking World and Russian Doll are TV series that Kiwi thinks are ideal bingeable lengths for TV series

Learn more about The First Draft Listener Club

The New York Teen Author Carnival

When Jennifer visited Portobello Road in East London, she felt like she was stepping back into the London of Charles Dickens (author of Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities), artist William Hogarth, Jack the Ripper (learn more with The Complete History of Jack the Ripper by Phillip Sugden), The Labour Movement, the London Dock Worker Strike

Simon Lipskar of Writer’s House was interested in Jennifer’s first crack at writing a novel, which was 1,100 words(!)

Sally Kim, VP and Editor in Chief at Putnam, was then at St. Martin’s, when she purchased Jennifer’s first book

Steven Malk at Writer’s House became Jennifer’s agent to sell A Northern Light and subsequent books

Jennifer’s mom bought her a copy of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, and that sparked the obsession that led to A Northern Light. (Non-fiction accounts of the murder of Grace Brown include Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906, written by Joseph W. Brownell and Patricia Enos; and Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited, by Craig Brandon.)

The murder case of Laci Peterson, documented in true crime novel A Deadly Game: The Untold Story of the Scott Peterson Investigation by Catherine Crier

Jennifer was stopped short by a New York Times article about the heart of Louis Charles, Dauphin of France, the imprisoned son of the king of France who was toppled by the French Revolution. The story was likely either “Genetics Offers Denouement To Mystery of Prince's Death,” by Suzanne Daley, or “MEANWHILE : Learning from a heart stilled by revolution,” by Catherine Field.

Jennifer was inspired by “Savage Beauty,” the Met’s retrospective of fashion designer Alexander McQueen’s work

Jennifer’s short story in Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All led her to explore the themes of beauty and how we reinforce those standards on young women in Stepsister

I blow up Maurene Goo’s spot (author of I Believe in a Thing Called Love, The Way You Make Me Feel, and her newest, Somewhere Only We Know) getting obsessed with the Supernatural TV show (listen to Maurene’s First Draft episodes here, here, and here)

I’m obsessed with The Dyatlov Pass Incident, which was covered in Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar

Abdi’s daughter has a PJ Harvey poster in her bedroom, which makes her the coolest seven-year-old on the block

Archie comics were what turned Abdi into a voracious reader

Andy Hardy, Christmas, and movies from the 30s and 40s were some of the Americana that made Abdi drawn to the U.S. culturally

Tahereh Mafi, author of the Shatter Me series, A Very Large Expanse of Sea, Furthermore, and Whichwood (listen to Tahereh’s episode of First Draft here)

Old TV shows like I Love Lucy were deliberately sexless

Judy Garland and Joan Crawford were two women who had public personas, but were hiding their interior lives. Abdi was drawn to that as a young, closeted gay man

The book How to Be Gay by David M. Halperin dives into how certain films and people become gay icons

Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele (33 ⅓) by Amy Gentry, a book that dives into the making of Tori Amos’s iconic album

One of Abdi’s first jobs was as an assistant in the company founded by director Alan J. Pakula, director of Sophie’s Choice and All the President’s Men, among other films

Abdi spent so much time reading scripts in his first jobs, he achieved Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of becoming an expert after spending 10,000 hours doing a thing (which Gladwell outlines in his book, Outliers)

Abdi is obsessed with Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, and feels that Maupin’s books have had the most influence over him as a writer

Reading James Baldwin makes Abdi “want to do something else,” because Baldwin is so intimidatingly good

Sarah suggests writing a couple pages of your finest Flannery O’Connor rip-off and see how it feels to mimic someone else’s voice

Tehrangeles is the word for the huge community of Iranians in Los Angeles

Alessandra Balzer was Abdi’s editor for The Authentics, and he knew he wanted to keep working with her

Abdi shares a quote from Hedwig and the Angry Inch writer and star John Cameron Mitchell about putting your obsessions into your work

The Act Up movement was pivotal to drawing attention to the AIDS crisis

Right from “Lucky Star,” Madonna’s first song and video, Abdi was obsessed with her

Two O.J. Simpson-focused films: O.J. Simpson: Made in America (documentary), and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is a good example of Abdi’s dedication to revisiting history

Truth or Dare, the documentary about Madonna’s 1990 Blonde Ambition tour

Some queer works that Madonna led Abdi to explore include the historic documentary Paris is Burning, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, known for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Talk to Her

Abdi is obsessed with RuPaul’s Drag Race

Mommy Dearest is one of the films that RuPaul supposedly gives contestants before they come on RuPaul’s Drag Race

Abdi is a huge fan of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, a 12-week program of creative exercises meant to unblock

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, the Netflix series based on the massively popular book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Amy Poehler, comedian, actress, writer, and director, who is not from the same town Kate is from, but they both grew up “outside Boston”

Early on in childhood Kate fell for The BabySitter’s Club books by Ann M. Martin, and the Sweet Valley Twins series by Francine Pascal, and then she fell for Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Revisiting The Boxcar Children, written by Gertrude Chandler Warner, with her daughter was a special bonding experience

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and other “kids surviving intense circumstances” books are so fascinating, right?!?

Kate’s eight-year-old daughter is plowing through Raina Telgemeier’s graphic novels, including Smile, Sisters, and Guts

The Fear Street books by R.L. Stine, It by Stephen King, and V.C. Andrews’ books like Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind

The film Grease is not actually appropriate for young kids, it turns out

When she moved to New York City, Kate signed up for classes at the UCB Theater and rose through the ranks in the improv community

I basically demand that Kate read Vacationland: True Stories From Painful Beaches by John Hodgman because she went to college in Maine

The two writers I mention who went to Vermont College for Children’s Writing well into their careers are Ally Condie, author of Matched, The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe, and more (listen to her First Draft interview here) and Brendan Reichs, author of Nemesis, Virals, and co-author with Ally Condie of The Darkdeep

On Grief by C.S. Lewis was one of the only books out there for people experiencing loss for a long time

The poet Taije Silverman has written about the grief of caring for her dying mother, and Kate found her work while grieving for her own loss

Kate and her Forever35 podcast co-host Doree Shafrir’s conversation on the By the Book podcast, in which Kate discusses finding Twilight by Stephenie Meyer while grieving and how it inspired her to write

“How I Finally Let Go of Grief for my Dead Mom,” Kate’s piece in Buzzfeed about the pain of letting go of grief

Holly Root, founder of Root Literary, is Kate’s literary agent

Kate’s husband is Anthony King, who has written for TV shows Silicon Valley, Broad City, Search Party, Playing House and more, and he co-wrote Beetlejuice: The Musical which has been nominated for eight Tony Awards, including best musical

Kate is writing in Scrivener, a writing program

Elana K. Arnold, author of Damsel, What Girls Are Made Of, Infandous, A Boy Called Bat, and more (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here) said in her interview with me that she feels like she might be ready to move on from writing about anger and feminism

A Cup of Jo is the website and newsletter run by Joanna Goddard that is packed

Kate wants to be up front about the fact that Vinter’s Daughter sent her their Active Botanicals Serum, she did not buy it herself

The Call Your Girlfriend episode that walked through an OB-GYN appointment

Cat Winters, whose recent book, The Raven’s Tale, called for her to research Poe a ton. In that process she discovered that Edgar Allen Poe’s #1 hater outlived him, then wrote his obituary and his first biography, which has shaped how we think about Poe to this day. (Listen to Cat’s First Draft episode here)

Hear Lindsay Smith’s first episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni here

Lindsay has an AlphaSmart keyboard that she takes on the D.C. train system so she can write while she commutes

One “What if?” that got Lindsay writing Alchemy of War was, “What if I took Inglourious Basterds (movie) but it was like Stranger Things (TV show)?”

Lindsay was inspired to write A Darkly Beating Heart, after visiting Japan and staying in a historically preserved town meant to preserve the Edo Period

Lindsay researched Rasputin for the hot villain in the Saints of Russalka series, including reading books about him and also jamming out to “Ra Ra Rasputin,” a disco song by German Euro group Boney M.

Lindsay has written short stories for A Tyranny of Petticoats and Toil and Trouble, anthologies put together by fellow D.C. YA writer Jessica Spotswood (hear her First Draft episode here) and Tess Sharpe

Lindsay wrote a short story in the universe of the Blue Rose role playing game

Stucky: the fandom name for Captain America (Steve Rogers) + The Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnum)

Britta Lundin, author of Ship It (hear her episode of First Draft with Sarah Enni here) wrote for Riverdale (TV show) and is open about loving fandom in a similar way to Lindsay (who loves The Winter Soldier)

Lindsay collaborated with Max Gladstone for The Witch Who Came in from the Cold, a serial story released by Serial Box (founder Julian Yap approached Lindsay about developing and writing it). The first season of The Witch Who Came in From the Cold was released as a book by Simon & Schuster

Lindsay and her husband are in multiple Dungeons and Dragons groups, which she says calls on a whole different skill set from her writing brain

Lindsay turned to KBoards, a forum for self-published authors, to discover the ins and outs of the self-pub industry when she released Web of Frost

The app “Self Control” has been useful to keep Lindsay focused as she tries to figure out how to balance productivity with self-care

Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie and generally super smart person, told me, “Time is the least free thing.” (Listen to her First Draft with Sarah Enni here)

Lindsay was paired with an artist for the Strange Romance comic anthology,

Lindsay wrote an angry girl comic for A Soul Divided Slash Caged in Flesh, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inspired anthology

The Redwall series by Brian Jacques

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander were among the fantasy stories Ryan devoured after she discovered Redwall

AIM: AOL instant messenger

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine was a novel Ryan devoured, and was so upset by the fact that it didn’t have a sequel that she made her first foray into fan fiction

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Bret Lott author of Oprah Book Club pick Jewel, who taught Ryan at the College of Charleston, where she majored in creative writing

Cathedrals by Raymond Carver was the kind of high literary fiction that was all Ryan was allowed to write about in college (she turned to fantasy after graduation)

Kowloon, the Walled City in Hong Kong that inspired Ryan to write The Walled City

Jackie Pullinger, a woman who worked inside Kowloon for 25 years, and author of Chasing the Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong’s Drug Den and A Crack in the Wall: The Life and Death of Kowloon Walled City. Hearing her story inspired Ryan to explore Kowloon and to write The Walled City

SNIS: Shiny New Idea Syndrome

Anata No Warehouse, an arcade in Tokyo that replicates Kowloon Walled City in painstaking detail

Bloodsport, the Jean Claude Van Damme movie in which certain scenes were filmed in Kowloon Walled City

Ryan’s short pitch for Wolf by Wolf is: Code Name Verity (by Elizabeth Wein) meets Inglorious Basterds (movie) meets X-Men (comic book and movie series)

The Leviathan Trilogy by Scott Westerfeld, which is a fantasy world that takes place in an alternate World War I, which inspired Ryan’s approach to World War II in Wolf by Wolf

Alvina Ling, VP, Editor-in-Chief of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, was Ryan’s editor for The Walled City, Wolf by Wolf, and Blood for Blood

YALLFEST, an annual young adult book festival that takes place in Ryan’s hometown of Charleston, S.C.

Ryan asked Alexandra Bracken, author of Passenger, for advice on writing time travel. Alex told her, “Run--don’t do it,” but Ryan went ahead and did it anyway

Pam Gruber is a Senior Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, and she was Ryan’s editor for Invictus

Ryan’s next book, a stand-alone YA, is pitched as Lost meets Westworld meets Black Mirror (her nickname for it is TwistyAFBook)

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark was one of the books Ryan may not have read unless she was in South Korea with limited access to English-word books