Golden Brown: My note's from the signing of YA scifi's new it-guy

        'YA is sexy.'

Whatever I was expecting from Pierce Brown, this wasn't it. I think by now everyone has seen the photos, I mean, the guy is shockingly good-looking. And he's a killer writer.  This is what's known. But what's not known is that he's funny in a self-depracating way, and seems like he really enjoys both the writing and meeting his fans.
Before he explained how YA became sexy, he read an excerpt of his new book, 'Golden Son' that moves forward with his protagonist from 'Red Rising' into a whole new arena, and he promises that he's done everything he can to avoid middle-book-itis, that tendency of middle books of a trilogy to be less cool and fun than the first books. He also confirmed that it will stay a trilogy, he says that readers are smart, they can tell when a series gets stretched out just for a cash grab.Besides, he has plans, he has other stories he wants to tell.
He also wanted to make sure we knew that he hates love triangles, so don't expect Darrow to be caught in the middle of one like some of the other YA big books of the last few years. But again, he doesn't need the added drama of a love triangle to keep 'Red Rising' interesting, he's using a more complete and complex set of motivations than just romance to move Darrow. From the front row, someone asked if 'Red Rising' was really YA, and that's when Brown replied with 'YA is sexy', it can be more than just watered down and sanitized versions of adult novels.
He continued on to tell us about his first book, written when he was just 18, and why it will bnever see the light of day. He mostly glossed over the next five novels he wrote, which among them collected 130 rejections, except to say that 'someday' he might revisit an Atlantis novel, which he said was interesting, but that the crowd of Atlantis novels might not leave a lot of room for another one.
He's confident the final book will arrive early next year, though it's up to Del Rey as to exaclt when that happens. He wants to have the series finished before the movie, because he wants to write Darrow as Darrow, and not to write for the actor that gets cast. It's an interesting observation about the potential of film adaptations to influence and perhaps warp the writing of the novels. Though he does have one last confession for us before the q and a ends, and the signing begins: he wants to die horribly in the film adaptation.
Hollywood, let's make this happen.