Today I have a guest post from the author of Cinder and Scarlet, Marissa Meyer. Marissa is in the UK next week and will be signing copies of her books in Waterstones Bromley on March 26th. I am gutted I can’t go but loved both her books and asked her to share a little about where the idea for them came from… ***
I wrote a great amount of fanfiction when I was a teenager and into my twenties. Sailor Moon fanfiction, to be specific. And while I would occasionally stray into the land of Original Works, usually when I would get a bright, shiny idea for a novel and write a few chapters before I got bored with it, I always returned to fanfics. They were comfortable and safe and, most important, fun!
So when I heard about a fanfiction writing contest that was being offered on a web site I frequented, I decided to give it a shot. As a fun sort of challenge.
The contest itself was designed to create hybrid stories. The moderator had made a list of genre tropes, and entrants had to choose two of them to include in their stories.
My choices: To include a fairy tale character, and to set the story in the future.
That short story eventually turned into a science-fiction retelling of “Puss in Boots,” one of my favorite fairy tales. And it came in second place in the contest! Er… out of only two entries. But by the time I learned of my barely-runner-up status, my imagination had already moved on, filling me with ideas for combining more fairy tales with more science-fiction tropes… an entire futuristic world populated by fairy tale characters… an entire SERIES of science-fiction retellings!
And thus (after much more brainstorming, plotting, and conniving), Cinder and The Lunar Chronicles were born.
***
The most recent addition to the Lunar Chronicles, Scarlet was published in February by Puffin. The third book, Cress is due for release in 2014. Fans of the series can also read The Queen’s Army, a short story set between Cinder and Scarlet. Thank you to Marissa for sharing this post.
3 Comments
So Many Books, So Little Time
I love that the idea for this came out of a fanfiction challenge!
Lucy
It’s really nice to see how Cinder came about because it’s something that we don’t always hear authors tell. This has just reminded me that I need to read Scarlet soon. 🙂
Jesse Owen
I love how these fab books have come out of a fan fiction challenge 🙂