The international and NYT bestselling author of The Iron Fey series, Julie Kagawa is tackling two notable YA genres in one with The Eternity Cure: vampires and post-apocaplyptic. Here, she shares more on this darker, bloodier followup to The Iron Fey, and lets us in, almost, on a huge secret…
THE ETERNITY CURE Synopsis:
Allison Sekemoto has vowed to rescue her creator, Kanin, who is being held hostage and tortured by the psychotic vampire Sarren. The call of blood leads her back to the beginning—New Covington and the Fringe, and a vampire prince who wants her dead yet may become her wary ally.
Even as Allie faces shocking revelations and heartbreak like she’s never known, a new strain of the Red Lung virus that decimated humanity is rising to threaten human and vampire alike.
YA: What made you decide to start writing?
Julie Kagawa: Well, the original life goal was to be a veterinarian, but then I discovered you had to be somewhat good at Math and Science and MATH to really pursue that career. And since numbers hate me, I decided to give the writing thing a go.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about ETERNITY CURE?
JK: It’s a much darker book than say, my Iron Fey series. In this world, the vampires are scary, the world has fallen into ruin, and there are things out there that want to eat you. Allie is still a vampire trying desperately to hang onto her humanity, and in The Eternity Cure, she will face tests and trials unlike anything she’s ever encountered before.
YA: How did the idea for this book/series arise? What are your major inspirations (TV, film, other literature/stories)?
JK: I was toying with the idea of writing a post-apocalyptic series after The Iron Fey, when my agent asked how I felt about writing vampires. Granted, I’d never planned to do a vampire book, but then I wondered what would happen if I combined the two, vampires and post-apocalyptic. And voila, the idea for The Immortal Rules was born.
Inspiration-wise, I wanted to bring back the scary, non-cuddly vampires, so Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Underworld, White Wolf’s Vampire the Masquerade/Requiem, and the original Dracula were all inspirations for the vamps in The Eternity Cure.
YA: What about the vampire myth, in your opinion, has held the YA reader’s fascination for so long? What about vampires makes them so timeless?
JK: I think it’s that balance of monster vs. human that makes vampires so fascinating. Vampires are monsters; they’re dead, they crave blood, they’re unnaturally strong and fast, and they prey on humans. And yet, they’re so much like us, with feelings and uncertainties and regrets. Some have made peace with what they’ve become, some revel in it and are true monsters, and some still struggle with the fact that they’re no longer human. But they still remember what it’s like–they were all human, once. And that, I think, is what makes vampires so intriguing.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
JK: It’s actually fairly boring. I wake up, do my morning things, and head into my office (sometimes in pjs, best part of writing full time) to sit at my computer. I check email, twitter, Facebook, and eventually get to opening up my work from the previous day. Then I write, either until I have at least a thousand words, or until five o’ clock rolls around. Unless I’m in Deadline Panic Mode and the wordage quota goes up and I’m forced to turn off the internet because I’m so easily distracted by online happenings. Twitter is the bane of my productivity, I’m afraid. 😉
YA: What’s next for you?
JK: Right now I’m finishing up the third and final book in the Blood of Eden series, The Forever Song, and after that I’m moving on to the third book in the Call of The Forgotten series, the spin-off series of The Iron Fey. And after that, I have a top secret series that I can’t share just yet but I hope will be epic!
Thanks for the interview!