Cassandra Clare

I wanna say something probably unpopular and possibly presumptuous. I was reading your last newsletter and that song choice was very, umm “Siri what do young people listen to these days?”. I mean, you also called Nine Inch Nails old. That’s *offensive*, is what it is.

So: Hi! I’m from the OG Shadowhunters generation. I was born in the late 80s, I’m a mother, and still have cassette tapes, CDs and Vinyls in my house. I would LOVE to know what your REAL tlkof playlist is. Like, the songs of your heart, those that you don’t need google for 😅

Also, I would do (small) crimes to get an arc. Please save me from a life of felony!

SORRY I WILL BE BACK, I LEFT MY CRANBERRIES CD IN THE QUAD.*

I am indeed Gen X, and I love the music of my generation (and the one before mine, you cannot take the Beatles from me) but I am pretty sure if you asked Siri what young people listen to these days the songs on the playlist, other than maybe Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift, would not be on it! You'd get a lot more Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, Tate McRae, K-pop and whatnot. While I think my playlists mostly feature singer-songwriters and confessional indie-pop, Matt Jaffe I think of as largely unknown (I could be wrong!) and Hey Violet as punk. It's more eclectic than popular, I think?

And while one could certainly search for "What the kids are listening to today", it would be hard to look for "what are the kids listening to these days in the way of music relevant to this unpublished book." I mean, I don't know what AI chatbots can do, I hate AI and avoid it, but that strikes me as beyond its capabilities.

I think the thing is that playlists for books are not just "songs I like and listen to a lot while writing" — it's songs I've culled out of that list that have lyrics that remind me of a character or dynamic or address a topic. If I do search for music, it's generally to find recommendation lists of "songs about second-chance love" or whatever, so that the topic is on my mind when I write. And I have to both think the song feels relevent and like it enough to listen to it a lot. In some cases, like the Jessia song, it's one of the only songs I can find about a specific topic or feeling, but I still have to enjoy it.

For this particular book I did look for "songs from queer artists or songs that are not specifically gendered" for my own internal process and character headspace, so about 25% of the artists onlist identity as queer, and looking was how I discovered LEW (also that song is a banger. I listened to a lot of other queer artists as well while writing but for instance, "Becky's So Hot" did not fit the storyline and "It's Not Like I'm In Love With You" did. Ani diFranco was one of my favorites in the 90's and I think I've put "Untouchable Face" on a playlist, but there wasn't anything that seemed to exactly go here.) I imagine most of those would indeed probably be more recent — as are most songs likely to turn up on rec lists — but I am always looking for new music so that would be cool as long as the song fits the book theme.

So sadly, I do not have a secret, cooler playlist. I have specific playlists for music from my teen and college years, which I would be happy to share, but they're not book playlists, because book playlists aren't just "I listen to this," they're "this applies to the characters or situation". I've always thought my playlist songs were weird and nerdy since they span genres from industrial to alt-pop to indie singer-songwriters to folk to whatever. Perhaps it is clear I do not rock that hard, I would not be surprised if so.

I looked back on some of my older playlists, like Chain of Thorns here — and you can find Gracie Abrams and Lord Huron on them, so if I have been pretending to like Gracie it has now been for almost four years, which is a long time. I also found a playlist Holly B. made for me if that makes sense in terms of what my friends think I would like? I don't know if that helps, but they're all weird mixes of various genres and time periods.

Looking up this stuff caused me to realize I have playlists going back to Clockwork Prince, so that's kind of insane. What I do not have is ARCs, and my publisher has yet to print more, alas, so I'm waiting on doing the giveaway. Also, while Nine Inch Nails IS old, I was too young for it when Pretty Hate Machine came out, and you would have been A TINY BABY so you are not nearly as ancient as me, or Trent Reznor for that matter.

I saw that the UK publisher has given quite a lot of arc copies out do you know if they will be giving more copies out in the future or if they have a limited amount of arcs, as I am eager to get my hands on one.(90 days is too long for me to wait)

I just want to end this by saying how much i love your writing, and how much i CANNOT wait for tlkof! Thank you ❤️

Yes, there's more artwork, in that we haven't seen Frostbite's Ash or Dru yet, and there are various special editions with endpapers and covers that depict different scenes and characters. (Like this edition shows the Seelie Queen and this one(Target) shows Livvy.) And there are book box editions, etc.

Hi, Cassandra! As a writer, what's your favorite aspect of Kit's personality to write?

I like writing Kit because he has a very funny internal monologue. He is usually wryly observing things, including his own behavior. Mina can get him to do whatever she wants pretty much. He owns dinosaur socks and does not want them criticized.

These are all cute things, but I am wary of just listing things about Kit because I think they are much more fun discovered as part of the story. It feels a bit like a spoiler, in the sense that just being told this stuff, like just being told what happens in the book, is less fun than finding it out inside the story, and kind of less meaningful.

Wesslunardi asks "Hi Cassie, I have a question about the former members of the Cohort, such as Anush and Paige. We know that Anush left the Cohort at the end of The Dark Artifices. Will we see a redemption arc for Paige?I love your books!"

Your question is the reason I included Paige in the list of "characters people have asked about!" So . . .

Paige was a member of a hate group, and we've never really seen her demonstrate the kind of self-reflection or compassion that would suggest she's already on the road to becoming a different person. She didn't even leave the Cohort for particularly admirable reasons—it was mostly a matter of expediency.

Could she be redeemed? I think almost anyone can be redeemed if they're willing to do the work. But redemption isn't something that happens because the author declares it; it's something the reader has to believe. At the beginning of The Last King of Faerie, Paige is still a bully—that's why Dru is fighting with her. Realistically, it would take a great many pages (Paiges?) to show her confronting her beliefs, making amends, changing her behavior, and earning the trust of the people she'd hurt. She would be a very major character.

In some ways Dru's discussion with Luke about Paige at the beginning of TLKOF (should Dru forgive her, does she deserve a second chance) is about all of the Cohort, really. Can any of them be redeemed? Can they ever be brought back? Many families have someone they care about still in Idris, and we don't know if any of those people in Idris are having regrets about what they did. . . .but we will.

maryheronthorn asked:

is zara still mad at emma? does she want revenge if she gets out of idris?

The Last King of Faerie was an interesting situation because as far as the main characters, that die was cast ten years ago.The Last King of Faerie isn't introducing four protagonists; it's continuing four protagonists whose stories began in The Dark Artifices. Dru, Ty, Kit and even Ash are all set up with future protagonist business. The other characters we know from TDA are not. Ash is Sebastian's son, Kit is the Heir, Ty did something which changed the shape of everyone's future but didn't yet play out to its end, and Dru — well, we will see with Dru. :)

There are definitely books I've written with more protagonists — though having a POV isn't the same as protagonisting. I would still think of Emma and Julian as the protagonists of TDA, but not Diego, even though we get his POV. Their story drives the plot. Ditto Lucie, James and Cordelia probably. But those stories are more diffusely spread out over a cast of supporting characters who themselves have substantial arcs and plot business (and I would never tell anyone that if they think Cristina or Matthew are protagonists, that they were wrong. How you look at them is not my call!) When the plot business is, however, The End of All Things, you go from having nine people who need a resolution to nine hundred. Which requires some different work.

Because of that, I knew I had to be very disciplined about not adding a huge amount of business for other characters. Especially new ones. Every main character needs an emotional arc, relationships to develop, choices to make, and a meaningful resolution. Then there are a massive amount of other characters who people have followed for decades who also need to appear, help, advise, or simply have a moment as the series comes to its conclusion — which was not the case in any other series I've written!

Unless I am absolutely insane and forgetting something, Sylvain doesn't look particularly like James other than having dark hair, which is the hair color of 90% of the global population according to Google. I talked here a little about how Matthew's friends and family have reacted to him but they don't react to him looking like James because he doesn't particularly. I think there's a brief moment where Sylvain being kind reminds him of James being kind but it is not weird to value the same good attributes (kindness, generosity) in a friend as you do in a romantic partner.

Yes — Dru, unlike the rest of her family, knows Livvy is a ghost. Everyone else has moved on — not like they don't still grieve, but they've accepted. Ty and Dru are stuck in this similar place of not having moved through any stages of grief as we would know them.

i literally spent my last date gushing about simon lewis

if not, can i please get an out of context spoiler 🥹🥹🥹

I am not sending any more ARCs out right now — I don't actually have more than one at the moment! I am hoping to still do an ARC giveaway, but delivery of those ARCs might well be pushed into October, when spoilers matter less, and less people are trying to sell the ARCs online for frankly ridiculous amounts of money (please do not spend seven hundred dollars on an ARC, they are just ripping you off!) I don't think my publisher or I expected any of that, so we are readjusting.

Are other characters aware of what kit and ty are doing in the last king of faerie or does it remain a secret?Also would you be able to share a ty snippet?

Okay I really read that as "are other people aware of what Kit and Ty are doing sexy business wise during TLKOF" and I was like — yikes. No. Should they be?

Dru's story does include sort-of flashbacks because there are things that happened to her that she herself doesn't remember. As she recovers those memories, the reader learns them alongside her, so those scenes are part of the present story rather than looking backward. They are key things we don't yet know.

Ty and Kit are a little different. Between Queen of Air and Darkness and The Wicked Powers, they were not having life-changing adventures (the most exciting things that probably happened to Kit are in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall). They were growing up, and changing emotionally—but they weren't secretly having another trilogy's worth of stories off-page. They were both in a sort of suspended life between TDA and TWP in which they were not learning big new information, not yet dealing with the consequences of any of their choices, and not experiencing great losses or gains that we don't already know about. Kit being the Heir doesn't mean much during those skipped years, nor does Ty having raised Livvy mean much during those skipped years (as nothing about that changes until TWP) and those are the backbones of their personal arcs. And where they experienced personal growth, they were both in some sense stuck in time while they didn't deal with their issues or feelings regarding each other. In some ways, that is a big part of their story.

Ty doesn't so much have subjects as the Scholomance offers self-directed study, which is great for Ty. We do find out some of the things he's interested in school-wise in LKOF and projects he's been working on with Anush etc. I'm pretty sure however that no theses will get written during TWP. And the Scholomance might have to cancel commencement. Which would be tragic if they had a really good guest speaker. I can see Ragnor complaining that he had to call in so many favors to get Gandalf or whatever.