Author Interview: Sarah Rees Brennan

1. You’ve garnered a reputation for breaking your readers’ hearts and making them cry. Should we be expecting that x10 for the final Lynburn Legacy book?

I hope for floods of tears to carry away small children and also bicycles, and a sound of cracking that will make people think it’s an earthquake, but it will collective broken hearts. I hope for a book-inspired end times.

I mean like all my books it is good clean wholesome fun and the doctors say all my readers should recover with no side effects bar the twitching and distrust of the whole outside world soon...

2. How does writing The Bane Chronicles with Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson work?

I keep Maureen and Cassie in little cages and I feed them only when they write for me or do humorous dances. They try to escape but they’re quite short, so I overpower them easily. It’s a lot of fun.

No, each Chronicle works differently – some we’ve written together all in the same room, some stories one of us builds the skeleton and another adds the flesh. They’re all really different stories set in different times in history, and all very much their own thing. I wasn’t lying though – it IS a lot of fun.

3. I really love Sorry-in-the-Vale. Is it inspired by a real place?

Aw, thank you! By a few different places – most of all by the town where my aunt lives, which my aunt tells me I ‘mustn’t mention on the internet’ on account of some weird thing she has about ‘being murdered in my bed.’

Quick-fire round!

4. Favourite writing snack?

There are these Milka Daim bars. They are like Swiss chocolate plus crunchy caramel, they come in family size. A family of me and all the imaginary people I come up with? PERHAPS.

5. Obsession of the moment?

THE WHITE QUEEN, the mini-series about the War of the Roses starring Rebecca Ferguson and Max Irons. Richard III is my no.1 royal celebrity crush (what’s a little suspected child murder and five centuries when you have true love!) and I was transfixed by Anuerin Barnard’s portrayal of him from loyal kid brother to mad king, with a range of appropriately dramatic hairstyles.

6. Current read?

ROSE UNDER FIRE, the sequel to Elizabeth Wein’s earth-shaking ladyrrific CODE NAME VERITY.

Thank you so much for a fantastic interview Sarah! You can read my reviews of Unspoken and Untold to get you in the mood for some books that you’ll love having your heart broken by.

Sophie