Shadows and Feys
File Cassandra Clare and Holly Black under fantasy writers that you will cross realms for
File Cassandra Clare and Holly Black under fantasy writers that you will cross realms for
Circling around the formation of fictional universes and full-blooded urban fantasy, the names Cassandra Clare and Holly Black could easily come to mind, almost as if they were some deity’s gift to humankind to shed light on the supernatural.
They are novelists who, at a glance, look like they delve in underground cyberpunk YA set in a dystopian world full of redheads and a protagonist shy of a swashbuckler—evident through the authors’ funky-colored hair and devilmay-care auras reverberating im the room. But just to be clear, they’re more into contemporary fashion of fantasy and world-building.
In case you’ve been living under (a fantastical) rock for the past five years or so, you may have never heard of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices, or collectively
The Shadowhunters from the realm of the Shadow World, and cult-favorite childhood classics from Holly Black like The Spiderwick Chronicles and A Modern Faerie. The best friends graced the Philippines for their King and Queen tour to promote their latest installment to their ongoing series: Clare’s Queen of Air and Darkness from The Dark Artifices and Black’s Wicked King from Folk of the Air; and to talk about their creative writing processes, their book characters’ complexities, and to confirm that Manila Institute, is in fact, in Manila (THAT Cathedral, to be exact).
THE SHADOW AND FAERIE WORLD
Queen of Air and Darkness is the sequel to The Lady Midnight and revolves around Julian Blackthorn and Emma Carstair’s ambitious journey to navigate the world of Faerie,
(and yes, this is a Holly Black reference—Black and Clare’s tandem is this sort of crossover that you never knew you needed) to redeem the Black Volume of the Dead, and discover why they’re not meant to be with their parabatais.
The Wicked King, however, navigates the travails of Jude and Cardan’s feat and her plans to overthrow the foes from both political and familial nature.
A writer with absolute gusto for the layers and aspects encompassing personas, Cassandra always starts with her characters and works her way up from there. She believes, however, that there’s not much of a formula behind the right order to write things in. “For Queen, I came up with the main characters Julian and Emma first and went on to develop this relationship between them and with other people, their own character development, what do they want, how are they going to end up. Then I’ll write the story outward from that,” Cassandra says. In Holly’s case, the story comes first just so she can figure out what is going to happen. In contrast with her previous works all aligned within her franchise faerie storyline, the Cruel Prince is the first novel that is completely set in the Faerie world so there had been a challenge in the build-up and its expansion, and an alteration in her overall writing process. “This was the first book I’ve written that was set in Faerie and I found it tricky because there isn’t much to find about them, even in the folklores I drew inspiration from,” Holly says. Working on her protagonist, Jude Duarte, who “walks in two worlds,” as how she would put it, is the icing to her book. She wanted to make her a relatable character—a human being in a Faerie world counteracting the cruel prince, who happens to be both her ally and her enemy. It creates this push-pull dynamic between them that drives the tension for the whole storyline.
How were they able to inject fantasy into their culture? As a kid, Holly would curl up in her room reading folklores about faeries that appear like monsters more than cutesy, tiny elves. Fantasy will always sound like home to these two, for it gives them a “different way of looking at our lives, because the world could be bigger and wilder than we could ever imagine,” Cassandra says. She also centers on this idea that the world is in great divide, from partisanships to the way people respond to changes—some withdraw, some succumb. She always tries to incorporate that notion into her Shadow realm.
The world of Shadowhunters expands thoroughly with every book that Cassandra releases, and in order to keep track of all the characters and the new ones sprawling every now and then, she admits that she keeps a Shadowhunters Codex book—the same manual she publishes for every fan’s reference as well.
Cassandra decided to highlight her humble high school roots by setting the location in Los Angeles this time. She said that L.A. bangs between “glamorous and seedy” that creates this sort of contrast for her fictional creatures, in which she envisions every time she finds a perfect spot, “seeing monsters and magic in mundane places.” She was also able to incorporate some of her favorite places, like the
Canter Deli. BIRDS OF THE SAME FEATHER
They are best friends. They tour together, talk about elements (writing or occult, there’s no in between) and stuff together over coffee, write books together, and that’s something hard to come by when you’re both authors of today’s most popular genre. Magisterium
is a brainchild of their writing prowess as a twosome sharing the same love for the unnerving. They say that it took awhile before Magisterium came to see the light of day, and their mind’s inner workings didn’t hit it off right away, but getting into it together provided more leeway for the both of them to unify the story. “The process, of course, got us fizzled out, like we were clear about our visions but ended up changing the story every time, but certainly, as we get to discuss it further, it appeared more concrete, like, ‘this is what’s going to happen, and this will happen!’” Holly says.
As much as we’d like to read something that is nonfantasy from the two, “It is never going to happen.” There are, however, new stuff to watch out for and you can expect the Clare and Black DNA. Cassandra hinted that she’s been working on her new book called The Red Scrolls of Magic, which has been a product of her prospective books-to-write from quite some time now. Also, another Infernal Devices sequel is on the works. For Holly, she’ll be releasing Queen of Nothing January next year to conclude Folk of the Air.
Fantasy sets a different way of looking at our lives, because the world could be bigger and wilder than we could ever imagine. – Cassandra Clare