Lauren Kate, author of the “Fallen” series, was welcomed by a group of students on November 10 when she came to visit at lunch. She discussed her life leading up to being a published author and then after, continuing to talk about her books and following up with answering the audience’s questions.

Kate first began with addressing how lucky Taylorsville students are to have author visits, because she never had the privilege of having events such as these when she was in school. She also explained how she didn’t know that she wanted to be an author, but that she just liked writing. All this led up to her seventh grade English teacher and the journal she assigned her two-year students to write in.

This journal was her way of being the hero she wanted to be in real life. She came home from a summer camp and looked at her grade, her teacher had written “Keep writing”. She explained how this simple sentence was the only encouragement she got to become a writer. With this she wrote and was rejected 67 times. One time she decided to give up, but found that she couldn’t. Inspiration then washed over her and “Fallen” was what came out of it. Success flooded her after this and she has currently just had her newest book published.

Her first book,”Fallen”, was published in 2009 and proved to be a success amongst teens. The following books that came one year after the other, also proved to be as popular as the first. Her current series is the “Tear Drop” series and she started these in 2013 with the book “Tear Drop” and her newest one that came out recently on October 28, “Water Fall”.

When asked about her inspiration for her newest series Kate said, “Teardrop started when… I was crying and I was talking to my husband about what was bothering me… and we started arguing because he wouldn’t allow it to become a big deal and at some point in our conversation he reached out to my eye and caught a teardrop on his finger and he brought it to his eye and he pressed it to his eye and blinked and when my tear was being absorbed into his eye I felt like we were connected and he understood me… and so I wanted to write a story on the power of tears.”

There is no exact date yet, but in 2015 the movie “Fallen” will hit theaters. Kate had the opportunity to be a part of creating it; having a say in the script and such other features. She hopes to create movies for the other books, but says they need to see how this one pans out first. Some of the people who will be involved are Scott Hicks as the director, Mark Isham as the music composer and Kathryn Price, Michael Arlen Ross, and Nichole Millard as the Screenplay writers. The actors playing the main characters are Addison Timlin (Luce), Jeremy Irvine (Daniel) and Harrison Gilberton (Cam).

The biggest advice Kate had for aspiring writers was,”Finish your novel.” She explained how she wanted to give up so many times and move on to another idea, but that she still continued with her current one and it payed off.

Kate gave more advice when a student asked her about the revising and she went on to say that she specialized in the revising process and her advice then was, “You can’t be afraid for your story to blow up and get really messy, because I believe it will all come together in the end.”