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Monday, April 23, 2012

Month of Cinder: Guest Post by Marissa Meyer!!



It's been so awesome hosting this month long event for the book, and even though the month is coming to an end, CINDER is always around to pick up and read again! Thank you so much to all of you who have joined in this month and big thanks to Marissa Meyer for writing the book and being so generous and sharing CINDER with us :0)

Alright, alright...I'll get to the good stuff and I've saved the best post for last guys!

A guest post from Marissa Meyer telling a little about the journey of the first words of CINDER all the way to being a published author! She certainly didn't let bumps along the way get her down and we are all so lucky they didn't! I am so glad that I've gotten to experience this amazing sci-fi fairytale and I cannot wait to see where Marissa takes the series.


 
The Story behind CINDER: Book One of the Lunar Chronicles

The seed for CINDER and The Lunar Chronicles was first planted in my brain after entering a writing contest in early 2008. For the contest, I’d written a short story (a Sailor Moon fanfic, titled “Luna v. 4.2”), which gave a futuristic twist to “Puss in Boots,” one of my long-time favorite fairy tales.

I would later come to find out that there were only two stories submitted for that writing contest… and mine didn’t win.

Perhaps most authors would hear that and recognize that science-fiction is clearly not their forte and they should move on to another genre. But not me. I was inspired. I’d had so much fun writing the (losing) story, and it had given me an idea… an inspiration. I was going to write an entire series of interconnected futuristic fairy tales. As far as I knew, it had never been done before, which is a rarity in itself, so I started brainstorming. Rumpelstiltskin as an android? Bluebeard as a rogue spaceship merchant? The possibilities seemed endless.

And then I had what I refer to as my “boy sparkling in a meadow moment” as I was falling asleep one night.

Cinderella… as a cyborg!

I could envision her instantly: a mechanic instead of a servant, but still oppressed, still slaving away for her hateful stepmother, still dreaming about going to the ball despite knowing its impossibility.

The ideas flooded my head and would continue to inspire me for weeks, eventually connecting with other favorite fairy tales until The Lunar Chronicles began to look more like one continuous storyline, rather than four separate books set in the same futuristic world. And Cinder, my star, was at the heart of its all.

That November (National Novel Writing Month), I sat down to get to work and ended up dashing out both CINDER and Book 2: SCARLET, along with about 1/3 of Book 3: CRESS, all in 30 days. (Word count total: 150,011. Why the insanity? I was trying to win yet another contest… which I also lost. But that’s a story for another time.)

Skip forward two years, two re-writes, and countless revision and editing drafts later.

Once I’d finally, finally gotten the book to a point where I was happy with it and it was time to send it out into the world, things started to happen very fast. I queried agents and, two months later, signed with the first agent I’d queried. Two weeks after that, she went on submission to editors. That was on a Friday, and we had our first offer the following Monday. About a week later, the book went to auction and finally sold to Feiwel and Friends, an imprint of Macmillan.

WHEW. It was a crazy whirlwind of a time, and BAM, just like that, I’d done it. I’d sold my first book. I’d sold my first series of books. I was going to be published.

Those were magic words. I was going to be published.

That was almost a year and a half ago. CINDER was released earlier this year, on January 3. It still feels like I’m walking through a dream, one that’s been recurring in my fantasies since I was a kid and has somehow manifested into reality.

I couldn’t be more thrilled with the enthusiasm and love I’ve received from readers and the YA community, and knowing that my book is being read and enjoyed is one of the greatest honors I could ever imagine. My only hope is that Cinder’s story will continue to enthrall and entice through to the very end.

5 comments:

  1. I love this guest post! And I absolutely love Cinder! I can't believe that Marissa wrote book one, book two, and part of book three in ONE month! That has got to be some kind of record! :))

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  2. That was really fun to read about. Thanks, Marissa. I can't even imagine writing that much in 30 days. It's practically insane!

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  3. Wow! What a story! I love how Marissa lost the writing contests, but continued to writing. And wrote the whole Lunar Chronicles in 30 days! That's so crazy! :D I can't wait to finally pick up my copy of Cinder and see what all the hype is about. Thanks for sharing, Marissa and Sarah! <3

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  4. I kind of love this a lot. I'd already heard about the NaNoWriMo, but honestly . . . that just never ceases to amaze me. o_o Writing 50k in one month is hard enough. 150k? That's . . . just . . . major props to Marissa Meyer. Major props.

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  5. It's always amazing to hear about an authors writing and publishing journey--this one especially! I haven't read Cinder yet (but plan to very soon) but I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it even more now that I know what Marissa went through to write this book. Truly inspiring. =)

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