Mortal Instruments News & Interviews #1

Subject: Mortal Instruments News & Interviews #1 Wed Jun 24, 2009 4:49 am

News & Interviews

2 signed copies of City of Glass, 1 copy of City of Bones and 5 autographed Mortal Instruments posters will be given away on Friday, June 26, 2009! click here to read more.

and the new interview with cassandra clare
1. The Mortal Instruments series is definitely an interesting one! How did you come up with the idea?

I was in a tattoo shop in the East Village with a friend who was trying to convince me to get a tattoo. I didn't wind up getting one, but I did get the idea for a secret world of demon hunters whose magic system was based on tattoos. From that, I developed the world and the story. I knew right away I wanted to set it in New York City because I had just moved there and I found it to be such a fantastical place, so the series is something of a love letter to New York.

2. We’re giving away signed copies of the third (and last) book in the series, for those readers out there who haven’t read books 1 and 2 can you catch us up quickly?

The series is is about a fifteen-year old girl named Clary Fray, whose search for her missing mother leads her into an alternate New York called Downworld, filled with mysterious magical creatures like faeries, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and the demons who want to destroy it all. She also finds herself torn between two boys — her best friend, Simon, for whom she’s developing new feelings, and Jace, who is one of the demon hunters, or Nephilim. As she gets drawn into his world, she discovers that she's more a part of it than she originally thought. City of Bones is followed by the second book, City of Ashes, and the third, City of Glass.

3. The titles for all the books are great! When you first sat down to write book 1, was City of Bones the original title or did that develop as you went along?

I had attended a play called "The Bone Chandelier" which was about, as you might imagine, a chandelier made of bones. It reminded me of the Catacombs in Paris, which is like an undeground city made literally out of the bones of the dead — and I thought, wouldn't it be great to set part of the book I'm working on in a city made of bones? Thus: City of Bones. It's very literal.

4. Vampires and Werewolves are popular topics in books these days. But in your books, they’re treated very differently. Can you tell us how they’re different and why you chose to write the world that way?

I actually think they're a throwback to extemely classic folklore about vampires and werewolves. My vampires fear the sun, crosses, can't go into churches, and live forever. My werewolves are allergic to silver and change every full moon. What I was really interested in was not so much in changing up existing mythology but in developing a new explanation for why these folkloric creatures exist. My whole world is built on the assumption that demons and angels exist and sort of use our world as a battleground, so all mythical creatures are explained as being part of that paradigm — warlocks are half demons, and vampires exist as a result of a demon virus.

5. I hear you’re working on a new series. Can you tell us about that?

It's a prequel series to the Mortal Instruments — prequels in the sense that they take place earlier than the events in MI. Much earlier, in fact. The first book, The Clockwork Princess, is set in Victorian London and deals with a new group of teenage Shadowhunters, the ancestors of the ones in the MI books — you'll meet the forebears of Jace, Clary, and the Lightwoods, among others. Also there are a few crossover characters, like Magnus Bane, and as usual there's lots of romance, demon-fighting, angst, and urban backdrops. You can read all about them here at the shiny new website: www.theinfernaldevices.com