Maggie Stiefvater’s Linger hit shelves this month and quickly landed at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Maggie herself was in California promoting the release, and I managed to catch her signing at Borders Glendale.
The stage was set: paper cranes were everywhere (there are paper cranes in Linger), hanging from the ceiling and dotted around the small staging area, which was backed by Linger fan art (Maggie would also be judging an art contest – one girl even stood up and sang a song she’d composed. It was pretty awesome. But I’m getting ahead of myself…)
Maggie came out, looked around the room and asked how many present were fans of her Facebook or Twitter. 80% of the people assembled raised their hands. Maggie smiled, and said: “You make all my hours of procrastination so worthwhile.”
She chatted for a bit about how the San Francisco fans had warned her she’d hate LA, and various stories from book touring, then she settled in for fan questions:
Q: What inspired you to write Shiver?
MS: I’m a terrible person. I like to watch people cry. I like to make people cry, preferably while wearing mascara, contact lenses, or at their place of business.
Q: Do you do research?
MS: Research, it kind of baffles me. I did tons of medical research on the hippocampus, thalamus, mutagenic viruses. I watched wolf documentaries, so many that my Jack Russel terrior started to howl (like a wolf) in his sleep (previously he’d sounded like a Star Wars laser cannon).
Q: Why write about werewolves?
MS: I prefer human impared. Sorry girls, I do not find werewolves sexy. They have fleas, they slobber, they smell like wet dog… It was a metaphor for loosing our humanity in a homogeneous suburban society! Then I woke up and realized I wrote a trilogy about werewolves.
Q: Where did you get the inspiration for Grace’s parents?
MS: I ripped them from real life. I went to north Virginia for my first novel, and parents there would give their kids credit cards and car keys, then go off on a three day weekend.
Q: What was the hardest scene to write?
MS: The Linger bathtub scene.
Q: Can anyone write a novel?
MS: Yes… Like if you want to play a Bach piece, you suck at first, then you practice and practice and you can do it, as long as you don’t tell yourself “I suck” along the way. I firmly believe in the non-sucky-ness of us all eventually.
Then Maggie judged the art contest (the singer came in 2nd), and settled in to sign books for the long line of fans.
For more answers from Maggie, here are highlights from her Linger blog tour:
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TB: Did you intend for “The Wolves of Mercy Falls” books to be a trilogy or did the story just pan out that way? If you needed to, could you write more?
MS: Well, as I wrote it, I thought it would be a standalone. Then when I was done, I thought I
could really use another book to tie up loose ends. But as I started to plot out what I was doing in book two, I realized I needed three. And that seems to be pretty true; FOREVER is a pretty definitive ending point. I’m sure with all the characters in that world, there would always be more to tell, but I don’t think I will be. Best to leave readers wanting more rather than overstaying your welcome.
EM : Some people are considering you to be the next Stephenie Meyer and the Shiver series to be the next Twilight saga. Are you ready for that kind of pressure and fame?
MS: Ohimosh. Twilight has become a religion. I don’t know if I could take that — that sort of scrutiny of everything about me. I think Stephenie Meyer must just have the internet turned off and blinkers on when she goes out to keep from going insane. Though a theme park would be nice… Okay, no. No, I’m good. Really… Maybe just paperdolls?
EM: Is there anything you (as an author) are hoping that the reader might take from Shiver and Linger?
MS: The idea that you choose the person you turn into. A fondness for German poetry. An undying craving for hot chocolate or chicken parmesan.
BW: The Wolves in this series are different than that of the typical Werewolf book. Do you find Werewolf stereotypes irritating, and where did this Wolf idea come from?
MS: I actually am totally disinterested in typical werewolves and don’t have a single werewolf novel or movie that I am in love with. I arrived at them as my creature of choice in a very roundabout way — I wanted to write a novel that was bittersweet, about loss and saying goodbye. And I just happened to be looking for a short story contest to enter at the same time, and found one for werewolf stories. So I combined them, got stuck in that world, and the rest is Maggie history.
BW: My understanding is that this is a Trilogy, do you have any idea about works for the future?
MS: Oh, yes! I actually have already begun work on the book that will be coming out when the Shiver trilogy is done. Scholastic just bought three more standalone books from me that I unfortunately can’t actually talk about, because they are Super Secret. I can say that the one I’m writing is a paranormal YA, not a series, about blood, beaches, and kissing.
A: Do you ever dream about your characters/stories? If so, do those dreams ever become part of the actual book?
MS: I dream about my characters and stories all the time. Dreams are often the genesis of my short stories and while I usually can’t use them exactly as they happen, they often have kernels of great stuff that I couldn’t think of while awake. I can always tell when I’m really deep into a rough draft because I’ll start dreaming scenes from the book. Yay, subconscious. I think a lot of authors take inspiration from their dreams.
WR: And what was your reaction to the cover of Linger?
MS: Happy seal clapping. Not quite as loud and thrilled as Shiver, because I knew the theme they were going to go with to match Shiver and the newness of that concept was part of the thrill, but still, I was pretty darn happy that we had another beautiful cover.
WR: As an artist, it must be hard for you to be so hands off in the cover design. What’s the hardest part?
MS: Letting go. Not sending one hundred .jpgs of cover concepts. Not saying ‘can we change these branches?’ Trusting someone else!”
WR: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
MS: Just that one of the best parts about the cover design process is seeing all the foreign covers (since Shiver is licensed in 32 countries, there are a lot;www.shiverseries.com has them all) — same book, wildly different jackets. It’s pretty amazing to see the divergent visions different editors and cultures have forthe same story. Because it’s still Sam and Grace in between the covers.
BYE: Did you start writing Linger knowing that it was going to be from four points of view?
MS: Ha! Planning! Never heard of the stuff. First I thought it would be two. Then three (adding Cole). Then four (adding Isabel). At one point, I thought I was insane. At another, I hoped I was.
BYE: Can you tell us about any deleted scenes? Did you have a hard time letting any of them go?
MS: I just spent about ten minutes staring off into space trying to remember deleted scenes for Linger (I can only think of them for Shiver and Forever) and my total inability to come up with them must mean that if there were any deleted scenes, they didn’t mean that much to me.
BYE: Shiver was originally titled “still wolf watching” Then it was going to be titled Linger and Linger was called whisper at one point (we’ve got this all right, right?) So how did you determine each book’s final title?
MS: Vodka…No, I’m kidding. When Scholastic nixed the title STILL WOLF WATCHING, they asked me to come up with a list of other potential titles, and they asked if I could make it a one word title like my other books if I could manage it. Both SHIVER and LINGER were on that list, and we went with SHIVER, since bbbbrrrrr, cold. Then LINGER was going to be BREATHE and then the plot element that gave it that title went away and I decided to opt for another “er” title, which gave me WHISPER and then I decided that was pretty but not meaningful. LINGER was more the mood I was going for. And then when it came for the last book, I spent hours on internet word search engines looking at every single word in the English language that ended with Er. You’d be amazed how many words are highly inappropriate for young adult book titles.
BYE: Since they’re kind of a big deal in Linger, we have to ask, why paper cranes?
MS: WHY NOT? Also, because I love the myth that if you fold 1,000 of them, you get a wish. It was something I hinted at in Shiver but didn’t use and then I just had this image of paper cranes hanging from a ceiling and I knew I had to write it.
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