This past week Laini Taylor was in Wellesley, MA for her Daughter of Smoke and Bone tour. With her bright pink hair she doesn’t look like your typical YA author which is good, because her writing is anything but typical.
For Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is her fourth novel but first book tour. Taylor says that she worked in a bookstore and remembers having to pay people with free coffee drinks just to fill the seats. Hence her hesitation in wanting to go on tour.
While talking with the crowd Taylor said, “It is hard to talk about the book because it is a book of secrets but keep in mind the tagline: Once upon a time an angel and a devil fell in love…it did not end well.” For those of you who haven’t read the book, trust me: you want to unravel the secrets for yourself.
When discussing how Daughter of Smoke and Bone came to be Taylor said:
“It was born as a mental health imperative. I cheated on another book. I need to be strict with myself because I often have a tendancy to be flaky and must cultivate a habit of completion. I wrote Lips Touch when I should have been writing Silksinger. After Silksinger I had an idea in mind for a book with spaceships and ballerinas but it didn’t pan out. The characters were false and I couldn’t get a handle on my science fiction. I persisted because I believed that one must be stubborn but I knew if I had no joy in writing it people wouldn’t find joy in reading it. I gave myself a break and decided to free write for one day. During that day two characters appeared, a girl with blue hair and her father who wasn’t human but had raised her like a father. After that day I had a lot of questions but not a real story. I didn’t tell anyone for the longest time because I wanted them to read it in the context of the narrative. I did finish the other book which is now referred to as the book of misery.”
Overall it was a great signing event hosted by Wellesley Books. Laini was incredibly entertaining and honest when describing her journey as an author. Be on the look out for Hypable’s review of Daughter of Smoke and Bone.
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