Describe your latest project.Well, the book that's coming out right now is the last in the Mortal Instruments trilogy ? City of Glass. And I'm so excited about it coming out, because it brings the story to an end and I'm really looking forward to readers letting me know what they think. Hopefully, they'll be happy about the way everything turns out! The book brings all the characters together in the Shadowhunters' mysterious homeland, Idris. Valentine is busy getting his hands on the last Mortal Instrument and planning to bring a war against the Shadowhunters unless they accede to his demands. Meanwhile, the protagonists are busy falling in and out of love and getting in trouble like they always do, and most of them are faced with terrible, life-altering choices that determine their futures.
If you could choose any story to live in, which story would it be? Why?
Well, the books that are exciting to read are generally not books where you feel it would be enjoyable to be one of the protagonists. It's fun to read about dramatic events, less fun to experience them personally. "May you live in interesting times" and all that. Even when I think about living in a Jane Austen book, in which the concerns seem slight on the surface (marriage, romantic ties), I have to realize that they were hardly slight concerns at the time. I wouldn't mind living with Hilary McKay's Casson family ? they're a big, messy, fun, artistic family you'd love to be a part of.
Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
Lord Worplesdon was Florence's father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning, lifted the first cover he saw, said "Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!" in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of his family.
?from Carry On, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
What is your favorite literary first line?
One of my favorite opening lines (there are too many to list):
"'I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he is the one.'" ?from Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
How did the last good book you read end up in your hands?
It was What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, and I picked the ARC of it up off a pile of books in a friend's house. Later it won the National Book Award. Yes!
What is your favorite breakfast cereal?
Trader Joe's organic Raisin Bran Clusters.
Share an interesting experience you've had with one of your readers.
I had a teenage boy write me because his girlfriend had broken up with him, but he felt sure that if he could get her a box of her favorite books signed by the authors, she'd take him back. He had a whole list of authors, and apparently we all pitched in, because he put the box together and indeed she did take him back. I think she appreciated all his effort!
Who are your favorite characters in history?
I'm more drawn to particular historical time periods than to specific historical personages. Right now I'm writing a historical fantasy series set in the Victorian era, and I will only read books set in that period. I'm enjoying the biographies of the writers of the time ? Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thackeray, and how they interacted. Jack the Ripper fascinates me, but I wouldn't exactly say I like him. Otherwise, anything about Elizabeth I or the romantic poets ? Keats, Shelley, and Byron ? will generally get me to pick up a book.