Scott Westerfeld, author of the popular “Uglies” series and the “Leviathan” Trilogy, has recently come out with a new book. “Afterworlds,” can be described as two books in one.

The two books are divided into even and odd chapters with alternating story lines.

Even chapters of the 599 page book follows 18 year-old Darcy, a Young Adult fiction writer who participates in a national novel writing month (often called NaNoWriMo.). Through the writing month, Darcy got the idea for “Afterworlds.” After accepting a publishing contract, she leaves the thought of home and college behind and moves to New York to complete the final edition of her book “Afterworlds.”

The odd chapters are the finished draft of the book Darcy writes. This tells the story of Lizzie, who was visiting her father in New York when a terrorist attack occurred in the airport. After pretending to be dead to hide from the terrorists, Lizzie finds out that she has the ability to go to the afterworld.

While Westerfeld was promoting his new book at Anderson’s Bookshop in Downtown Naperville on Oct. 2, he talked about how much the Young Adult genre has changed. His first book in the Midnighters series was released in 2004.

“[YA has] gone through so many changes since I started writing,” Westerfeld said. “Back then it was this kind of sleepy little part of publishing and now it’s this big huge monster global [phenomenon], so I thought it would be fun to chronicle it and to write a little bit about how cool it is and what kind of weird conversations that writers have when they hang out together.”

He says this book answers the question of where he gets his ideas and shows how Darcy’s real life effects the book she writes.

“It’s about a young writer and you see her real life and also get to see her novel,” Westerfeld said. “So, you’re seeing how the connections form between a writer’s real life and their work. It’s about how ideas are generated and how they appear and how they cross back and forth between fiction and reality.”

While at Andersons, Westerfeld talked specifically about how teenagers influence popular culture and how Hollywood producers pick up on it. This can be shown in recent young adult book-to-movie adaptations such as “The Fault in Our Stars” and “The Hunger Games.” Westerfeld feels that it’s similar to how Rock and Roll was in the 60s and 70s, when it used to be played in very few areas until teenagers picked up on it, and it became an icon for American culture.

“[Rock and roll] became this American art form and it became the symbol for the United States and the rest of the world,” Westerfeld said. “ [it becomes] how everybody thinks- you know, in the 60s and 70s were like ‘Oh, America, James Dean rock and roll!’ now it’s like ‘America, sparkly vampires, John Green!’”

Westerfeld plans to release a writers guide on how to write YA, that goes along with “Afterworld.” He also is collaborating with two Australian authors on a book involving superheroes that will come out next year.