Hey, guys!
Today I'm bringing you an awesome interview that I had with the talented New York Times bestselling author Sara Wolf! Her novel Bring Me Their Hearts. This is her latest release and it is the first book in a fantastical fantasy trilogy about an immortal soldier girl who is sent to steal a prince's heart. I'm very excited to read this book. I hope you guys enjoy this interview with Sara!
Page Count: 400
Published on: June 5, 2018
Published by: Entangled Teen
Genre(s): Fantasy, YA
Age Rating: YA
Goodreads synopsis:
A lush, unique new fantasy trilogy about a girl tasked with stealing the prince’s heart…literally, from the New York Times bestselling author of the Lovely Vicious series.
Zera is a Heartless – the immortal, unageing soldier of a witch. Bound to the witch Nightsinger ever since she saved her from the bandits who murdered her family, Zera longs for freedom from the woods they hide in. With her heart in a jar under Nightsinger’s control, she serves the witch unquestioningly.
Until Nightsinger asks Zera for a Prince’s heart in exchange for her own, with one addendum; if she’s discovered infiltrating the court, Nightsinger will destroy her heart rather than see her tortured by the witch-hating nobles.
Crown Prince Lucien d’Malvane hates the royal court as much as it loves him – every tutor too afraid to correct him and every girl jockeying for a place at his darkly handsome side. No one can challenge him – until the arrival of Lady Zera. She’s inelegant, smart-mouthed, carefree, and out for his blood. The Prince’s honor has him quickly aiming for her throat.
So begins a game of cat and mouse between a girl with nothing to lose and a boy who has it all.
Winner takes the loser’s heart.
Literally.
~~~
Interview with Sara Wolf:
O: What inspired you to write?
S: Believe it or not, when I was young I was hugely into fanfiction writing. I wrote about pretty much everything - from X-Files to Pokemon to Harry Potter. My longest fanfic ended up being 1k pages long and 700k words! Releasing a fanfic chapter every week really trained me to write a lot, edit later, and always keep a riveting story in mind. The cool part is if I ever need a warm up or I'm feeling really writers-blocked, I'll dive into my favorite fandoms (right now it's Final Fantasy and Star Wars!) and churn out a fanfic or two. It really helps to get my creative thoughts flowing.
O: Are your characters inspired by real people? If so, who, and how did they influence the people you create?
S: Honestly, I'm not very good at getting into other people's heads. I'm much better at getting in my own head, so a lot of my characters are aspects of my personality refined and concentrated. Lucien, for instance, is the very protective and fair part of me - the part that always wants justice and to defend the underdog. Zera is the part of me that jokes around and doesn't want to take anything seriously, for fear of having to face her own feelings, but she's also got a bit of my tendency to self-sacrifice; martyrdom, self-blame before anything else. Malachite is sort of the strong and yet very straight-forward and casual person I've always wanted to be, and Fione is the part of me that hides her feelings behind a smile, who burns hot with (sometimes misplaced) revenge, and who puts on an outward show of obedience only to rebel every chance she gets. It sounds a bit arrogant, but my characters are me, my children in a way.
O: What is your writing process? How do you plan out your stories?
S: I'm usually TERRIBLE at plotting out stories. I hate outlines with a passion, mostly because as I'm writing the book it tends to veer off and never really stay on the outline's track. A great joy of writing for me is to see where the story takes me, without knowing or guiding it, just sort of letting the characters and the world take the wheel instead. Of course, this sometimes doesn't make for a great story, which is where I step in. I had to rewrite BRING ME THEIR HEARTS four whole times before the characters and I finally agreed on how it came out. And by rewrite, I mean from scratch. And all the drafts were 100k words and above. Phew!
O: Do real events influence your writing?
S: I think real events usually subconsciously influence my writing - I tend to put what I want to see in books instead of what is actually happening in the world. But the themes of the real world are still very much present; engines of hate such as fascism, homophobia, and racism are what I modeled Archduke Gavik's entire character upon. He's not a good man, and he uses religion and fear to both control and mislead people. He's possibly one of the worst bad guy characters I've ever written - writing him at points made me sick to my stomach. But that's all the more reason to cheer as Zera, Lucien, Fione, and Malachite oppose him.
O: That's kind of hilarious. I feel like that kind of how I write too. Is this your first time writing in this genre? If so, how is it different from your other works? Did it require a new planning style?
S: This is my first time writing fantasy, yes! Fantasy is pretty different from contemporary in the sense you can't make pop culture jokes (something I love and adore), and a lot of convenient things we take for granted in writing become unavailable. For example, I couldn't use the word 'devil' in this book, at all. Devilish, etc. That's because this world doesn't have the concept of 'the devil', or 'being devilish', because their religion has no devil. Things like that, that are very basic in the real world, turn out to be a huge hassle in fantasy. You always have to reinvent concepts like that to fit into the world you're writing. I had great influences though - Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen was really the catalyst that set me off into writing this book - she makes writing fantasy look so simple when it's actually SUPER HARD!
O: What was your favorite part of writing Bring Me Their Hearts?
S: My absolute favorite part was writing all four characters together. Zera, Lucien, Malachite, and Fione really mesh well and I love their antics together - I really want to explore their friendship as the books progress. Their hilarious banter cracked me up more than once, and I loved watching them grow and learn together. Another of my favorite parts was writing about the food, considering I'm SUCH a huge sucker for food. Food is life. It was great fun to think up foods for the Vetrisian court since it's such a huge part of any culture in general.
That's amazing! Thank you so much, Sara for doing this interview with me. I truly appreciate it! I can't wait to read Bring Me Their Hearts and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors!
Happy reading!
Olivia
