Cassandra Clare

Cassandra Clare:
I am Cassandra Clare the author of two series of fantasy books for young adults: one is called "The Mortal Instruments", the other "The Infernal Devices, in German that is "Chroniken der Unterwelt" und "Chroniken der Schattenjäger". I live just outside of Boston with my husband and I have three cats. And I write every day.

Cassandra Clare:
Yes I think that that is true. You know Mark Twain once said that the world is a book and those who don't travel only read one page. I think that that is very true. The more that you travel the more you get the sense of the word as a larger place and the more you get a sense of the variety of history and mythology. And when you know about these things you can incorporate them into what I feel is a more rich and more large tapestry of fantasy. .

Cassandra Clare:
I think that all writing is good practice. If you don't feel like writing fan fiction than you should not write fan fiction. You should only do it when you think it is fun. But it is very common in writing schools for people to say, for the professors to say, write this story in the style of Hemingway or continue this story from that other's person view and fan fiction is a way of doing that. It gives you a little bit of a basis from which to start out and it makes the writing process itself a little bit easier because there is a little bit that is built in for you already. So I do think that is good practise in the same way journalism is good practise and technical writing is good practise. But again I would say definitely only do it if it is fun for you.

Cassandra Clare:
For me its very important. I keep in touch with my fans by keeping a blog online and I try to answer questions every day. I also have a twitter and a facebook. I think that social networking gives authors a unique insight in the minds of their fans and for me that is very valuable.

Cassandra Clare:
Not really because they way publishing works. By the time a book is out and people are giving me suggestions I have already written the next book and the book after that. So they are kind of behind me. But sometimes in a general sense It will be helpful. They would say I would like to know more about this aspect of the world or I would like to know more about the background of this character and that will figure into things I do in the future.

Cassandra Clare:
I was for a reading in London several years ago. And as so often in England the weather was kind of dark and foggy. I took a walk and at a bridge I thought well this bridge was here long before we were born and will be here long after we'll be all dead. Typical writer thoughts I guess. And suddenly this image was in my head of a boy and a girl in Victorian cloths on one side of the bridge and these creatures, these clockwork creatures chasing them. That's how clockwork angel started.

Cassandra Clare:
I think there are deliberate parallels between the one and the other series and I think that there are relationships that are set up that look on the surface to be similar but most readers I come across by the time they are done with the second book they no longer think that this is that similar or that this is a repeat because it is the idea that it is set up to be similar and then it is played out completely differently. So it is the idea of these kind of archetypes of characters but in a completely different situation that ends completely differently. So I think I can understand why people would be worried because there are similarities in the beginning and that would go the same way, but I can reassure them that it is completely different.

Cassandra Clare:
Well easier and what I enjoy more is not the same. Easier is the Mortal Instruments because they do not require the same amount of intensive research than the Infernal Devices Series. I took six months before I even started writing and I only read books that were set in the Victorian era and only watched movies that were about the Victorian era and read much non fiction and history and literature and by the end of it I felt like I was in a bubble of the Victorian era. My friends were saying you starting to talk like you live in 1878. It was a very intensive process. For each book it was a lot of intensive research. That can be very difficult but is very rewarding, I think because of the difficulty to feel like I have gotten it right. So, I would say that the Infernal Devices is more difficult but maybe more rewarding and the Mortal Instruments is more pure and fun to write.

Cassandra Clare:
That is interesting to hear that it is popular in Germany because in the United States it is still not that popular. I had heard of it and I was very interested in steampunk, but it was definitely a cults movement, very underground. There are steampunk classics of books, but none have really been best-sellers or have really come above the radar. So when I thought about doing it I thought of participating in a sort of underground esthetics that I really appreciate. I am hoping that it will become more popular in the US. My books and also books by Scott Westerfeld and a few other authors that have started to come out out and have been more popular are steampunk. So I'm hoping that this is showing a trend towards that it is becoming bigger.

Cassandra Clare:
I can't really choose a favourite character because it is like choosing favourite children. But the character that is most like me in the mortal instruments is Simon and the character that is most like me in the Informal Devices is Tessa because she reads so much.

Cassandra Clare:
Yes, I always wanted to be a writer since I was around 12 years old and I wrote my first book.

Cassandra Clare:
I am happy with how things have gone. For me my big dream that I would like to achieve is for each book to be better than the books that came before, to continue to improve and to become better as a writer and hopefully to have a long career.

Cassandra Clare:
Oh, I really love fantasy. I have to say it is my favourite genre to read and one of the genres I love the most to write. Two things I would like to do is to write fantasy for adults and also I would like to write fantasy stories for more young children. Sort of a little bit more the age group of Percy Jackson or Harry Potter. But than I would like to write for adults as well. I would like to write about different fantasy worlds, I would like to stay in the fantasy genre. Whenever I tried to write realistic fiction I think what happens in these stories, it is so boring. It would be so much more fun if some dragons or zombies would attack! (She laughs).