My husband’s idea of a supernatural summer is Paul the psychic octopus (yes, he really does exist) correctly predicting the results of the soccer World Cup, but we know better, don’t we….?
Mmm . . . supernatural summer . . . just those words alone send a tingle down my spine. I sense mystery, magic, danger, suspense, romance – especially romance!
And golden summer days, full of sunshine and dreams and long hazy nights.
As an English writer it is such an honor to be published in the US by the wonderful people at Harper, but any of you who have ever visited England will know that we don’t always have great summer weather on this rainy little island. But one magical year, when I was about sixteen, we had endless days of sunshine that seemed to last all the way from May to September. I remember wearing the skimpiest of little cotton dresses and denim shorts, and listening to summer love songs on the radio, and having picnics with my friends down by the river, surrounded by tall grasses and scarlet poppies, the buzzing of bees and the glitter of dragonflies. I remember lying in the fields on hot, hot afternoons, the book I was reading discarded in favour of daydreams, and I remember looking up at the high blue sky and wishing that moment could last for ever. It didn’t of course, but the memories of that summer did. The memory of my first proper boyfriend, who was dark and gorgeous and kind, and who played in a totally cool band. The memory of him playing his guitar and singing specially for me. The memory of driving to a gig with him in a white Lotus sports car upholstered in red leather. (Why did I ever let him go?!)
I am sitting in my attic studio at the top of my tall Victorian house, set deep in the English countryside, and I am daydreaming. Half-formed ideas for new stories wander through my mind like elusive ghosts. Soft summer rain is beating on the windows. A cafe latte sits getting cold on my desk. A noise breaks into my reverie, getting louder, thunderous even, so that I can’t ignore it any longer.
Someone is knocking at the door, insisting that I pay attention. Unwillingly, I drag myself down the stairs. I see through the window that a DHL van is parked outside, and a guy with a package is waiting outside the door. An urgent delivery . . . a brown paper package with an international customs label . . . it can only mean something has arrived from New York. I fly down the last the few stairs and fling open the door. The DHL guy is suddenly the person I love most in the whole world; I dazzle him with my smile and he smiles back warily as I scribble to sign his forms and snatch the parcel from him. I dance away and rip it open, and there it is, mine at last . . . the first copy of Betrayal has arrived, and oh, it is soooo beautiful! The gold lettering, the image of the glittering Talisman in the mystical flames; it’s all so perfect that it actually brings a lump to my throat.
I worked so hard on this book. I sighed and swore and laughed and cried as I tried to figure out exactly what happened to Evie and Sebastian after the end of Immortal. I knew their story had to be told and I had to get it exactly right.
Inspired by Immortal by Gillian Shields
One question I always get asked on tour is how I came up with the idea of faeries as plants. While literary portrayals of faeries tend to emphasize their magical, otherworldly nature, the realm of art and sculpture is actually quite littered with flower faeries. So while I’d love to claim that I’m just brilliantly original, in fact faeries-as-plants is an idea with ancient, um, roots.
In that sense, my goal was not to invent a whole new mythology, but to think of new explanations for old stories. One obvious example, of course, is Laurel’s “wings,” which are not really wings at all, but which satisfy certain commonly-held ideas of what it means to be a faerie. Another example from my own books is that my faeries can live over two hundred years; they are not immortal, as in many faerie tales, but it is easy to imagine how a medieval human with a life expectancy of 35 might make that mistake! In some cases I even use faeries to account for mythologies that did not originally have faeries in them. Continue reading »
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