More Info about the Four Short Stories Collection

So, I announced the other day that there will be four short stories written from Four’s perspective coming out later this year, yay! And I got some questions about them that I’d like to answer here.

First, here is an article on Publisher’s Weekly about the short story collection in which I give more juicy details: here.

And now, your questions:

Q: What are the official titles?

The Transfer

The Initiate

The Son

The Traitor

Q: When do they take place?

I talk about this a little bit in the interview linked above, but I’ll say it again here: these stories mostly address Tobias’s backstory and some mysterious things happening in his world before Tris joins Dauntless. There will be some overlap with Divergent’s timeline, though.

Q: Are these only e-books?

I addressed concerns about what to do if you don’t have an e-reader here. The stories will be released individually as e-shorts and then in a collection with Free Four in paperback in February (in the US, at least— not sure how that will work outside the US because it’s up to each publisher). So how you choose to read them kind of depends on how long you want to wait!

More info on the collection: Four: A Short Story Collection

Q: Will the stories be available internationally?

I hope so! We’re working on getting them licensed to as many countries as possible.

Q: Wait, are these novellas? Books? Or just stories?

I would describe them as meaty short stories. They will each be approximately 10,000 words long. (For reference, Divergent is 105,000 words long.)

I think that is all. Thank you all for your enthusiasm about these, I can’t wait for you to read them.

FAQs: But What If I Don’t Have An E-Reader?!

Yesterday after my short stories announcement, I noticed a few people distraught over not having e-readers (and thus presumably lacking the capacity to read the short stories when they come out, since they are e-shorts). I just wanted to mention that you do NOT need to purchase an e-reader in order to read e-shorts or e-books. What you do need is access to a computer or a smartphone. Most e-book retailers (Amazon, B&N, etc.) have a program or app you can download in order to read e-books on your computer or smartphone. There are also free, open source programs (like Calibre) that allow you to read e-books across platforms on your computer. I know because this is how I read e-books before I got an e-reader.

If you don’t have regular access to a computer, you can give talking to your local or school librarian a shot! They might know a way to help you. Librarians love helping readers access the things they want to read.

So, what I’m saying is, don’t fret! You’ll be okay.

Short Stories!

I HAVE BEEN WAITING TO TELL YOU GUYS THIS FOR MONTHS.

Short version: there are going to be Divergent e-shorts!

Four of them!

And they will be about…drumroll, please…

Four!

(See what I did there?)

And the first one will be out on September 24th!

Long version: when my publisher approached me hoping that I would be able to write some extra Divergent content for them, I considered a few options for what I might write about, or whose perspective I might choose. Over time it became clear to me that the character I was most interested in exploring further was Four. Two reasons: first, I know his perspective is the one a lot of you are interested in reading (I get asked if I’m going to write anything else from his perspective all the time!), and hey, you’re my readers and I like to write things you want to read; second, I was excited by the idea of expanding my own understanding of him, the way I did when I rewrote the knife-throwing scene from his perspective for the Free Four e-short.

For me, Four has never just been Tris’s love interest or a way for sexual tension to enter the story. He has always been a whole person with a history that affects him (and Tris) in significant ways, and a co-mover of the plot along with Tris. These stories are helping me to delve into his character in a way I never have before, and to build up parts of the world that Tris never experienced due to her limited perspective. Interestingly enough, they also affected the content of Allegiant, giving me more to draw from—awesome, right?

These stories will be longer than Free Four (Four’s retelling of the knife-throwing scene, which was only thirteen pages), and the first one will be out on September 24th. You can learn more official info here, too. And of course, I’ll keep you informed of the other stories as information becomes available, too.

Fan-Voted Tour Stop! Plus, About Events This Year

I am really excited to announce that my publisher, HarperCollins, is launching a fan-voted tour stop campaign today! What that means is that you (if you live in the US— more on that later*) can get your friends, your family, your shockingly intelligent cat, your neighbor Bob, your fifth period English teacher, whoever you want, to vote for your state, and if your state wins, I will go there on my Allegiant tour this year! I love this because it means that places that don’t usually get author visits have the chance to make that happen.

Also, if you vote, you’ll be entered to win a trip to one of my tour stops, too!

All of this is taking place here: http://www.epicreads.com/divergent/sweepstakes/

Segue: this feels like a good time to talk about my events this year. They’re going to be a little different than they have in the past— basically, there are going to be two rules. One is a “one book per person" rule (meaning that I’m signing and personalizing one book per person), and the other is a “no posed photos" rule. (Posed photos are when I take a break from signing and lean over the table/walk around it to take a picture with you.)

There are two reasons for these rules. The first one is time. I am extremely lucky in that my book events have gotten sort of…big. Which is amazing. But that means that the thirty seconds it takes to set up a photo, the sixty seconds it takes to sign a few books, is multiplied not just by 50 or 100, but by several hundred, and that can add a couple hours to an event that’s already pretty long.

Another thing that has happened as a result of the growing size of these events is that they have become much more stressful for me. For a long time I watched rockstar authors take All The Photos and sign All the Books and they were so good at it and so calm while they were doing it that I got mad at myself for not being the same way. But recently I’ve accepted that everyone has a different capacity for certain things, and everyone’s stress/nervousness is triggered by different things. I have isolated the things that stress me out (really long signings, lots of photos), and am trying to accommodate my own limits into my events so that I’m still able to be friendly and upbeat while I’m doing them (instead of entering panic mode).

I really hate imposing limits on my interactions with you guys. I mean, we have a special bond, right? (I think so!) But events were starting to become unmanageable for me, and we threw around a lot of solutions here on Team Divergent— like not doing them at all, or limiting the amount of people who can come to each one— but this is the solution we’ve landed on, and I’m happy with it because it means that a lot more people can come to the events, which is good for everyone, including the bookstores that will be hosting us.

Thanks for reading. When I mentioned this photo-related nervousness on Twitter last week during BEA, so many of you were so sweet about it, and I really appreciated that. As always, I love chatting with you guys when I see you in person, and it’s totally fine to take pictures of me while I’m signing or speaking, neither of those things makes me nervous at all.

I can’t wait to see which state I will be traveling to!

*I know, US only stuff is sad for those of you who don’t live in the US. But I’m hoping to be a little more international in the near future!