Wicked Powers:
When are the Wicked Powers coming out?
When are the Wicked Powers coming out? The answer is I don’t know. I’m not concealing the information, I’m not holding it back for reasons of suspense, I genuinely don’t know the answer. The reason is for the first time in 17 years, next year I’m going to take a break. After Chain of Thorns comes out, I’m going to take a little bit of time to restore my mental health and my physical health. Over the past couple of years, during the pandemic, I’ve written somewhere between 500,000 to 750,000 words, which is 7-8 normal books. I’m exhausted! Oh and not counting Secrets of Blackthorn Hall. I’m wiped out completely and I have been for a while. I don’t want to burn out completely because that would mean that I wouldn’t write again, I might never write again. I know I need to conserve that energy. And so because of that, I have not sold the Wicked Powers to any publisher. Don’t’ worry that this means my publisher isn’t going to publish it, they want to, all my publishers are interested, we’ve talked about it. But they all know and respect that I need that time off. So I’m taking that time off and when I come back from it, Wicked Powers will be the first thing that I do.
Posted 8/11
Why is Tatiana so obsessed with revenge?
We’re all obsessed with something. I’m obsessed with bubble tea, Tatiana is obsessed with revenge. Tatiana is a sort of tragic figure – her whole life is a series of terrible decisions she has made for a variety of bad reasons. she is someone who, when things go wrong in her life, cannot face any personal responsibility, she has to blame other people. She can’t even accept the idea that sometimes bad things just happen and it’s nobody’s fault. So she needs to find people to pin the blame on. In this case she has pinned the blame for everything that has gone wrong with her life, not where it should be on her father, but on Will and Jem and the Lightwoods. So she’s playing out this revenge fantasy in her head in which she believes that once she gets revenge, everything in her life will be better, which, I think we all know it won’t.
Why have Rupert and Jesse not been able to see each other this whole time?
So yes, many people who are reading Secrets of Blackthorn Hall have asked, why, if Rupert is a ghost and Jesse was a ghost they never saw each other. There is an answer to that, you get a little bit of it in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall and actually you will get the full answer in Chain of Thorns.
Who is the Ragpicker King?
Oh, a Sword Catcher question! A lot of people know the second book in the Sword Catcher series is called The Ragpicker King. He is indeed a character. You’ll meet him in Sword Catcher. He’s the king of the criminal underworld of Castellane. There’s a saying in Castellane:
“There are two kings in Castellane, the one on the hill and the one in the city”.
The one in the city is the Ragpicker King, he basically has his hands in everything, he’s always scheming, he always has a plan, he’s always involved in everything. He’s a really fun character!
Posted July 28
Are Kit or Ty dating anyone between TDA and the Wicked Powers?
Kit and Ty! If you are reading Secrets of Blackthorn Hall you know that Kit has a girlfriend. Ty is not dating anyone as of that time period. I would say they have different coping strategies. Kit is dating someone and he doesn’t even know if she is a werewolf or not because he’s really never asked her any questions about herself, and Ty is throwing himself into his studies. And I think it’s just good that they both have such good support systems, and I am excited for when they see each other again.
Does someone die in COT?
I know what this question means, and it means “does someone know and we care about die in Chain of Thorns?”
And the answer is yes. Someone we know and care about does die in Chain of Thorns, maybe more than one but at least one. And I can’t tell you anything more than that. I’m sorry don’t kill me.
What’s going on in Idris?
Right now? We don’t know! There is a little mention In Secrets of Blackthorn Hall that Alec has been in touch with Zara trying to arrange peace negotiations, but what’s actually going on inside Idris? Like are they doing well? Are they reduced to eating squirrels? We don’t know yet, but we will find out.
Posted June 30
So! Who is the narrator of Sword Catcher?
So Sword Catcher has a split POV. There is a male narrator, Kel, who is the Sword Catcher, and a female narrator Lin, who is a physician and they have two separate stories at the beginning but they dovetail together once Lin is called to the palace to heal the swordcatcher after he is wounded.
You initially had a darker ending for Chain of Thorns. Will we ever see that?
I have said that I initially planned a bleaker ending for the Last Hours, that’s true. But it doesn’t really work that way – it’s not like movies with deleted scenes. I knew really pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be able to write such a bleak ending. Given the time we are living in and writing during the pandemic and the horrible stuff that happened before that. There was no way I was going to be able to write something hopeless. I really saw a radical value in being able to be hopeful and not fall into despair myself by writing something so miserable. So none of the characters that you know are the characters as I would have constructed for this much less hopeful ending. The bleak ending wouldn’t make sense with the characters as they are in the books now. It’s an alternate reality like Thule that will never be.
Do you think Anna and Ariadne will ever reconcile?
Anna and Ariadne! I don’t want to, obviously, say what happens in the third book, but Ana and Ariadne have a romance that is one of my favorite tropes. I call it second chance romance – they had a romance in the past and now they’ve met again after that romance went bad. Can they make it this work time? All I can say is that Anna and Ariadne are not over, there’s certainly a bunch about them in Chain of Thorns and in fact Ariadne is living with Anna.
Posted June 16, 2022
“Do you have more plans for Emma Carstairs? She’s my favorite character.”
I’m glad you like Emma, I also love Emma. If you are an Emma fan you should be reading Secrets of Blackthorn Hall, which is an ongoing story that is being told on Tumblr, involving Emma and Julian at the end of their travel year. So there’s that new content. You’ll probably — definitely see Emma in The Wicked Powers.
“You posted a snippet in which Kel is kissing someone named Merren. Is Merren a boy or a girl?”
Oh a Swordcatcher question! I love those. Yes I posted a snippet where Kel was kissing someone named Merren. Merren Asper is a boy. Kel is pansexual, and he kisses a lot of people, actually he kinda knows he has a problem with that. I love Merren, I’m excited for you to meet him.
“Why did you make Jem mortal again? He will die and Tessa will be sad.”
Jem was never immortal. Jem was a Silent Brother and they don’t live forever. They do live a long time, but they live an existence in which Jem was never able to be with Tessa. They were never able to see each other except for once a year on a bridge. So, for me, making Jem mortal again was giving him the thing he wanted, that would make him happy, and also the thing that would make Tessa happy. Because I believe that for her, living a happy life with Jem, having kids with him and having wonderful memories of him is better than never having to have a relationship at all and just knowing he is alive but not living. But that’s just me!
Posted June 9, 2022
“Is Secrets of Blackthorn Hall nearly done? I want to know who the ghost is.”
Cassie: We already found out who the ghost is in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall! I know a lot of you don’t believe it, but that’s the answer we have right now. Secrets of Blackthorn Hall is going to go on for a good portion of the rest of this year so it’s likely going to end around September or October, after which it’s possible we will bind it up into a book, so keep an eye out for that.
“Is Matthew’s flat a real place?”
Yes in the sense that it’s a real building, no in the sense that Matthew is not living there currently. It is on the corner of Wimpole Street and new Cavendish Street in Marleybone in London so yeah just go to the neighborhood, look for new Cavendish Street, walk along it till you see Wimpole Street, and you will see a big pink frothy looking building. That is Matthew’s flat and it was indeed serviced flats at the time that Matthew would have been living there.
“Will there be a juicy moment between Matthew and Cordelia in Chain of Thorns?”
I don’t know how to answer that because I feel like no matter what I say 50 percent of people will try to kill me! Let me just say that Matthew and Cordelia do spend a lot of time in Paris together, they get very close and things get pretty intense so… something to look forward to!
Posted May 2022
“Who made the beautiful art on the covers of the Infernal Devices?”
The beautiful art on the covers of The Infernal Devices was made by the same person who made the beautiful art on the covers of the Mortal Instruments and the Dark Artifices and the Last Hours, Cliff Nielsen. He’s been the artist for my covers since the very first Shadowhunters book, he’s done all of them. yeah I love working with him.
“Will there be a book with Ty and Kit in it?”
Yes there will be a book about Ty and Kit, but they do share the book with Dru, there’s a last trilogy of Shadowhunters books called The Wicked Powers that starts about three years after the end of the Dark Artifices. And in it we catch up with what’s happening with Dru and we also catch up with Ty and Kit who, at the beginning of the book, meet again after this very long, three year period of not speaking.
“Are you going to make another book series about Clary and Jace from the Dark Artifices?”
Okay so that was a little confusing to me because Clary and Jace aren’t from the Dark Artifices, they’re from the Mortal Instruments, and they also show up in the Dark Artifices. I’ve always been kind of curious and maybe you can tell me in the comments because Clary and Jace sort of already had their whole story in The Mortal Instruments and we’ve in fact dropped in on them multiple times after that to see where they’re at, you know we’ve seen them get engaged, we’ve seen them go to Faerie, we’ve seen them have adventures with Magnus and Alec, and I’m curious about what when people ask for another series about Clary and Jaceare they thinking, as we’ve seen Clary and Jace age up into their twenties now – are you thinking like an adult series? Clary and Jace as adults, or more stuff about what happened to them when they were teenagers, even though we already know how that ended? So I honestly don’t know the answer so if you guys want to tell me the answer in comments I would actually love to know.