Marie Lu's Blog, page 104
June 19, 2013
""My girlfriends and I want to know if you’re Day."
"Sorry, you got the wrong guy," I reply...."
"My girlfriends and I want to know if you’re Day."
"Sorry, you got the wrong guy," I reply. “But thanks for the compliment."
”- Day (excerpt from Champion, out Nov. 5)
"“My girlfriends and I want to know if you’re Day.”
“Sorry, you got the..."
“My girlfriends and I want to know if you’re Day.”
“Sorry, you got the wrong guy,” I reply. “But thanks for the compliment.”
”- Day (excerpt from Champion, out Nov. 5)
June 18, 2013
In which we talk STAR CURSED
So. Let’s talk witches. Fantasy. Hot boys who are actually (gasp) also good boys. Beautiful dresses. Oracles. Sisters. Magic. Plot twists. Heartbreak.
All words to describe STAR CURSED, the second book in Jessica Spotswood’s CAHILL WITCH CHRONICLES trilogy. (The first book, by the way, is BORN WICKED. It’s captivating. You should read it. It has all of the above too.) I had the extreme fortune of reading STAR CURSED early, and let me tell you, it’s possibly even better than the first. Not only are we treated to a thickening plot and a world that turns steadily darker—but we’re treated to some serious character development. Cate, Maura, and Tess are a breathtaking trio of sisters. And, just sayin….be prepared for some heartbreak. Agh!
Okay. Without further ado, here’s what STAR CURSED is about:
With the Brotherhood persecuting witches like never before, a divided Sisterhood desperately needs Cate to come into her Prophesied powers. And after Cate’s friend Sachi is arrested for using magic, a war-thirsty Sister offers to help her find answers—if Cate is willing to endanger everyone she loves.
Cate doesn’t want to be a weapon, and she doesn’t want to involve her friends and Finn in the Sisterhood’s schemes. But when Maura and Tess join the Sisterhood, Maura makes it clear that she’ll do whatever it takes to lead the witches to victory. Even if it means sacrifices. Even if it means overthrowing Cate. Even if it means all-out war.
In the highly anticipated sequel to BORN WICKED, the Cahill Witch Chronicles continue Cate, Maura and Tess’s quest to find love, protect family, and explore their magic against all odds in an alternate history of New England.
As part of the blog tour, each day Jess is revealing an annotated snippet from STAR CURSED. Check it below. Also, Jess has the neatest handwriting in the world.
If you add up the page number from each stop during the tour, you can enter to win a one-of-a-kind annotated ARC plus a star trio necklace! Find the other stops below, and on June 21, enter the Rafflecopter here:
Mon, 6/3: Good Books & Good Wine
Tues, 6/4: Ex Libris Kate
Wed, 6/5: Mundie Moms
Thurs, 6/6: Presenting Lenore
Fri, 6/7: Hobbitsies
Mon, 6/10: Green Bean Teen Queen
Tues, 6/11: I Read Banned Books
Wed, 6/12: Two Chicks on Books
Thurs, 6/13: Forever Young Adult
Fri, 6/14: The Story Siren
Mon, 6/17: YA Bibliophile
Tues, 6/18: Marie Lu
Wed, 6/19: Beth Revis
Thurs, 6/20: Veronica Rossi
Fri, 6/21: Marissa Meyer
STAR CURSED releases on June 18. That’s today! You can read the first chapter here. Be sure to pick up your copy, and if you haven’t hopped on the series’ bandwagon yet, get yourself BORN WICKED and enjoy!
Buy links: Indiebound | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
Find Jess online: blog | Twitter | Facebook | Cahill Witch Inspiration pinboard
June 14, 2013
LEIGH BARDUGO: Oh say... did I mention this PANEL OF AWESOME
On June 26th at Barnes & Noble at the Grove in Los Angeles…
MIKE DIMARTINO (Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender)
MARIE LU (Legend, Prodigy)
LEIGH BARDUGO (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm)
SETH HOFFMAN (The Walking Dead)
hosted by KURT MATTILA of The Big Pull Pod.
We’re…
So, you know. No big deal. Just paneling with the creators of Grishas, Airbenders, and badass zombies. I will be the swimfan hyperventilating in the panel’s corner chair.
What I meant is I will be totally normal. And excited! You should be there! So should all your friends and random strangers you grab off the streets! We shall charm and delight you with our tricks! Barnes & Noble at the Grove. June 26th. 7pm. COME.
June 11, 2013
infinite-rhapsody:
Day from Legend by Marie Lu (drawn by me //...
Day from Legend by Marie Lu (drawn by me // on deviantArt: Legend - Day by ~AngelLeila)
Gotta say, Day could probably rock eyeliner if he wanted to. Lookit the gorgeous art, drawn by AngelLeila!
June 5, 2013
My mission is complete
mwe......hehe.
June 2, 2013
The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys'
For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!”
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning. How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.
Fantastic.
May 28, 2013
(Picture is a sketch of my new protagonist, Adelina Amouteru,...
(Picture is a sketch of my new protagonist, Adelina Amouteru, accompanied by a quote from the very beginning of the story)
So. I have some news.
“New York Times bestselling author of the LEGEND series Marie Lu’s new fantasy trilogy THE YOUNG ELITES, in a Renaissance-like world where young children who survive the blood fever are often gifted with god-like powers, three rival societies battle for supremacy, in a major deal, for publication in fall 2014, to Jen Besser at Putnam Children’s, by Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency (World).” (via Publisher’s Marketplace)
There it is! The Young Elites. I drew some pics and pinned some Pinteresting things.
Think X-Men meets Assassin’s Creed 2 meets Game of Thrones. Those elements are all in there somewhere, mashed together into literary guacamole with a big keyboard-shaped spoon. (That was a terrible analogy. I apologize. Sort of.)
I cannot express my excitement at working with Team Putnam/Penguin again. I cannot. They are a team of Young Elites with all sorts of crazy powers. And Agent Kristin is a Superwoman who guided this little author through some seriously whacked out early versions of the story. Luff.
“Whacked out early versions, you say?” Yes, The Young Elites and I went through some growing pains before I managed to kick this story into line.
About a year ago, I decided I wanted to write a fantasy series. I grew up reading almost exclusively fantasy and science fiction, and the very first (thankfully unpublished) manuscript I ever finished in high school was a fantasy. So I always knew I would head in this direction. I came up with the initial idea for The Young Elites in early 2012 and excitedly wrote a few chapters. I tossed it. I tried again. I tossed it again. I did this several more time over the span of the next year or so, until I’d probably written enough words to have filled an entire book. Still, I couldn’t “find it.” I had characters, I had a premise, and I had a world … but I didn’t have a story. Not until a few months ago did I finally figure out my problem.
I had the wrong protagonist.
Picking the right protagonist for your story is one of the most important decisions you can make as a writer—and it was a decision I never had trouble with for Legend. Day and June were my protagonists the instant the story sparked in my mind. They came fully formed, their personalities and attitudes complete and their character arcs ready to go. I took off running with them.
With TYE, I didn’t have this same ease. I started out telling the story from the point of view of a boy we’ll call Faketagonist. Faketagonist had a cast of (hopefully) interesting secondary characters swirling around him … but he himself was bland and uninspired. Too normal. Too ‘nice’. Things happened to him and around him—but he never took action. Faketagonist waited around too much and relied on too many people. He was not protagonist material.
Then, I heard her. Off to Faketagonist’s side was a secondary character, a girl with snow white hair and a missing eye, a dark past and an even darker character arc. I hesitated to give her the lead role, to be honest. Adelina Amouteru is a bit like a teenage female version of Magneto and Darth Vader. She is not a nice girl. She has twisted opinions about the world and the people around her. Day (from Legend) was a boy who walked in the light, but Adelina is a girl who walks in darkness.
And I worry, because even though Adelina and I are very different in many ways, I see pieces of myself in her that I’m not proud of. We all have our dark side, don’t we? (Okay fine, maybe you don’t, but please nod along and humor me. Plus, we need to get together and work on nurturing your inner mwahaha.)
There are also superheroes, supervillains, royalty, bad boys with hearts of gold, bad boys with hearts of dead puppies, good boys who drink their tea with a spoonful of cunning, good girls who make mistakes, badass girls, badass boys, boys and girls who do stupid things, smart things, and everything in between. Oh, and magic. Naturally.
This is, of course, all what I’m picturing in my head. I’m not done with the story yet. And I’m working VERY hard to make sure that this book doesn’t make CSI’s Horatio Caine go, “Well, it looks like the Young Elites are nothing more than … *sunglasses* the Young Disappointments. EEEEEYYEEEEAAAH!”
That’s about all I have to say for now. I hope you guys will like it. I can’t wait for you all to read it in Fall 2014! Until then, I’ll be writing furiously and hyperventilating into a paper bag.
P.S. After Faketagonist was removed from his leading role post, he managed to pull himself together and turn into a surprisingly fun secondary character. He has congratulated Adelina and now lives on set in his secondary character trailer.
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Metias and June Iparis ft. Ben Barnes and Hailee...
Metias and June Iparis ft. Ben Barnes and Hailee Steinfeld
*Edit by followjunebug
The Iparis siblings. So nostalgic—I love this!
