Cinder Blog Tour: Interview + Giveaway

First off I would just like to say thanks huge to Ksenia and everyone at Macmillan for having me on  the Cinder Blog tour and to Marissa Meyer for answering my questions and writing an amazing book.

Check out my review of Cinder Here!

Interview with Marrisa Meyer:

Favourite Place to Write: Bed

Favourite Animal: Domestic: cats; Wild: wolves

Favourite Colour: Gray

1. Cinder is a Cinderella retelling of sorts, how did you come up with the idea to include Cyborgs, and Lunars in your retelling?

Although I’d had the idea for futuristic takes on fairy tales for a few months, the idea for a cyborg Cinderella came while I was drifting off to sleep one night, and I just saw her—robotic hand and foot, slaving away over mechanics. Her story started to develop naturally after that

How the Lunars showed up in the storyline is a little more muddled, but I’m sure it harks back to years and years of writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, as the Sailor Moon canon had a Moon Kingdom and a lost Moon Princess, and part of The Lunar Chronicles’ initial inspiration was a fanfic I’d written. Those two elements just hung on, even though the role and history of the Lunars changed drastically as I plotted the series.

2. Where does your inspiration to write come from? And why did you want to write a book?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and have known for many years that writing a novel was inevitable. It both baffles and delights me to think that my book could bring the same pleasure to readers that so many of my favorite books have brought me, and that’s definitely my greatest inspiration: to put the stories that are in my head down in front of readers in hopes that they’ll be entertained for even a short while.

3. I'm sure being a 2012 debut author is really exciting, what thoughts are going through your head in these last couple of weeks until Cinder’s release?

Right now I’m just trying to keep calm and carry on. All the publicity commotion has been way more encompassing than I ever expected it to be, and I’ve found that it’s way too easy to get caught up in the constant news alerts and to-dos and social networking. I have to remind myself to stop and appreciate the excitement and newness of being an almost-published author, before it all passes me by!

4. Why should people read Cinder? What should they expect?

I don’t really like the word “should,” but I (obviously) love my book and hope that readers will too! I hope that fans of both fantasy and sci-fi will enjoy it, that people who are burned out on fairy tale retellings will find something entirely new here, and that while the book can be succinctly summarized as “Cinderella as a cyborg,” it’s really a much more complex story than that implies.

5. What advice would you give someone who wants to become a published author? Based on your experiences?

It’s a cliché, but “read a lot” and “write a lot” really are the best two pieces of advice out there. Beyond that, I think it’s important to educate yourself about the querying, submissions, and publication processes as much as possible, and with all the resources out there now there’s really no excuse for going into this blind. Read agent blogs and industry newsletters and writing magazines—the learning part should never replace the doing part, of course, but it will still be time well spent.

Thanks so much for being a part of the Cinder Blog Tour, Hayley!

Thanks for having me Marissa, and good luck! :)

Giveaway:

Macmillan was nice enough to offer up a finished copy of Cinder along with a Cinder pocket mirror (super cute BTW) to one lucky winner as part of the blog tour.

- US/CAN only

- January 12th- 26th

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