*Contributed by Joanne Mumley*
Marissa Meyer was a Spotlight Guest at SDCC this year. With tons of panels and signings, Marissa was kept pretty busy. YABC is grateful that she took time out of her busy schedule to sit down for an interview. Marissa Meyer has an exciting year coming out with the first Lunar Chronicles graphic novel and her new book Heartless coming out this fall.
YABC: What’s it like being a Spotlight Guest for San Diego?
Marissa Meyer: I am still trying to figure out what it means to be a Spotlight Guest. I have lots of cool things happening. I get to be on multiple different panels and do a bunch of signings. There was this one VIP moment walking into the hotel and getting ushered over to the VIP table and they gave me a bag with all this stuff in it. So that felt very cool.
YABC: What made you go into fairytale retellings in the Lunar Chronicles and then into the Red Queen in Heartless?
Marissa Meyer: I have always loved fairy tales and loved reading retellings of them ever since I was a teenager. I remember for many years, I felt like I would never write a retelling because I had that impression that it had all been done before. If I were to do a retelling I didn’t want to write something that felt like it had already been done just another fantasy story or just another Cinderella story. So I spent many years working as an aspiring writer working on completely different works. Then I had this idea to combine fairy tales and science fiction, which I loved, and immediately got so excited about! Then I couldn’t find anyone who had done that before. This is it, this is my fun twist to add to it.
YABC: What do you want readers to take away from Heartless?
Marissa Meyer: That’s a good question. With all of my books, my number one goal is just to write an entertaining story. I want readers to feel that they have been swept away to this new world. I want them to fall in love. With Heartless, I ‘d love for all my readers to leave with a really intense sweet tooth because there is lots of description of sweets and baking, which I enjoyed writing significantly.
But other than that, I really drew a lot of inspiration from the world of Alice in Wonderland. I want readers to feel like that, even though it has my own spin on the story and one the world yes this was an inevitable story for the origin for the Queen of Hearts. While it’s different from Lewis Carrol’s work I want them to feel like it makes sense and works with what we know about the Queen when we see her with Alice. I hope that readers get that from reading.
YABC: The descriptions of the sweets and baking really drew me in, and made me hungry. What made you focus on baking and the future Queen of Hearts?
Marissa Meyer: So in Alice, one of the later chapters there is a trial based on the nursery rhyme “The Queen Hearts made some tarts all in a summer’s day”. In Alice in Wonderland, the big trial scene, the knave of hearts steals the tarts and is put on trial for it. So I came away from that wondering what do we know about the Queen of Hearts, we know she likes to behead people, is furious and angry for no apparent reason. Then all of sudden we learn she bakes tarts and they were evidently so good they were worth being killed over. So I started to create this character for her –about a girl that is a very talented baker. And that grew into a very big part of the Heartless story.
YABC: If you could meet any of your characters in real life, from Heartless or the Lunar Chronicles, who would it be?
Marissa Meyer: Probably Iko, the android from the Lunar Chronicles. She was always one of my favorite characters to write because she was so fun and quirky. But I would really love to go shopping with her. I feel like she could completely make me over and I would look fabulous forever on. Just help me please Iko, I trust you.
YABC: Who was the hardest character to write?
Marissa Meyer: A number of characters. For me, the most difficult characters are the ones that both in the story have secrets and have reason to conceal things. So the two characters that immediately come to mind are the Hatter, in Heartless, and then also Jason, the main love interest in Winter. Because both of them have secrets and have reasons they have to for reasons of the world and society in the life that they are in, they have to keep these concealed. I find that when I am writing a character that has a lot of secrets and these reasons that they also hide them from me. And so it becomes sort of a challenge to draw them out. Because both on paper and in my head they are always shadowed, it often takes me two or three drafts of writing a book before I really have gotten to know them and can really write them authentically.
YABC: What character(s) kept secrets from you where you were surprised about the evolution they took?
Marissa Meyer: A lot of them really do. Jason and the Hatter were certainly some. Even Jest, actually, the main love interest in Heartless. There were a number of things that I didn’t find out about his past until three or four drafts into the book. Those were kind of the big wow moments for me where I said “Oh! Now it all makes sense” And then in the Lunar Chronicles too, Queen Levana was one of those characters that was constantly revealing things to me. Her past and her motivations everything I learned made her more interesting.
YABC: You talked about how you started with writing fan fiction for Sailor Moon. What advice would you give to other fan fiction writers out there?
Marissa Meyer: I think one of the things I love about fan fiction and one of the reasons I am such a big advocate for it, because it is an act of love. There’s no obligation to do it. You aren’t doing it for money or publication. You do it because you love it. You love the story you love the characters. You feel compelled to write that story. Your only motivation is the love for it. I think as a writer, it is really easy to get swept up in wanting to get published wanting a big book deal, wanting a movie deal, wanting to hit a best seller list. It is easy to set these arbitrary goals of success on our selves. Every step that you hit there is always that next thing to reach for.
But I think the most important thing is to write from a place of love. And if you can build that foundation of writing because your passionate about it that is going to carry you through all the ups and downs of this career.
Another big Thank You to Marissa Meyer. It was great to sit down and talk about the love and passion of writing. I finished Heartless on the plane ride back to the east coast and it is one of my favorite reads. Cannot wait to buy a copy when it comes out in Hardcover!
