@cassandraclare I cannot contain my envy any further, so real question - how do I get an arc? As the co-founder and CEO of the Kit Herondale Supportive Army, I have a duty to uphold 🙏🏾

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@cassandraclare I cannot contain my envy any further, so real question - how do I get an arc? As the co-founder and CEO of the Kit Herondale Supportive Army, I have a duty to uphold 🙏🏾
Hi! You recently mentioned how “some” of the POVs are Ty’s (and Ash’s) which made me wonder about the “access” we’ll have to his mind, and the reason you’ve said Ty and Ash. Meaning - you kept saying the main three are Kit, Ty and Dru, but I wonder if Ty is not as central in the sense that we get to see less of his POVs than the other two.
I do want to say - I remember you’ve discussing your reluctance with writing his POVs in TDA, because he’s a neurodivergent character, and you wanted to do him justice and not presume to write him as you do the other characters (sorry if it’s not accurate, it’s been a few years 😅). Anyway, it’s understandable and very respectful either way.. and when you said that about his POVs I wondered if that’s the reason.
Either way, I’m EAGER to get to dive into his mind, and I hope it’ll be more than a quick dip 🤓
Thanks Cassie. I can’t tell you how excited I am this is finally happening. Life right not isn’t amazing, to say the least… so it means a lot to have something good waiting around the corner. 🤍 U.
I'm so glad the book is something to look forward to. Lord knows we can all use that. :)
I've been thinking about all the discussion about this, specifically about POVs, and the questions I continue to get about who are the main characters, and I wondered: Is part of the anxiety about this because these three books have no clear protagonist?
All the other trilogies/series have a specific protagonist: Clary, Tessa, Emma, Cordelia. (TEC splits between Magnus and Alec.) The Wicked Powers has essentially four main characters, but I have never called them "four protagonists" and maybe I should.
Essentially, a protagonist is the one whose goals and choices drive the story. By this measure, all four of these characters are protagonists. Each has an equally important arc, plot-wise and emotionally. Each has a very specific destiny. [spoiler] As the prophecy we learned about in Better in Black is translated, they are the only people mentioned in it, and all of them are required for the prophecy to work. [/spoiler]
So there are actually four protagonists or main characters, and those are Kit, Ty, Dru and Ash. Yes, we see mostly Dru and Kit's POV in book 1. That doesn't mean that's the way the POVs will play out going forward; we have a lot more ground to cover! It's just how it turned out I needed to write this book.
I think essentially writers and readers come at the concept of POV from different directions. It sometimes makes me feel like I'm having difficulty translating what it's like from this side of things, but I'll try.
When you're anticipating a book but it isn't going to be out for a while, I think often there's a tendency to try to predict how it will go based on the limited information you have. Will my favorite character have enough presence in the story to make me happy? So you look to things like -- who are the POV characters? Who's on the cover or depicted in the promotional art? What can you infer from the snippets or from the jacket copy?
And unfortunately, this is not a very good way to predict what a book is going to be like or how you are going to feel about it! All the snippets and images and little bits of info like POVs or chapter titles, all added up, are a very tiny piece of a 180,000+ word book. And it's okay, of course, to anticipate and try to guess and get excited and get worried! That anticipating is a lot of the fun of waiting for a thing! But -- things like POV just in the end don't tell you very much about what a book is like, or how it's going to feel.
For writers, choice of POV is a storytelling tool. You use the tool in the way that seems best for the story. It's not about how much you like a character or whether they are central. I stayed away from a lot of Will's POV in Clockwork Angel because he had a secret I didn't want to share; regardless, I think of Will as one of the most important characters in the entire Shadowhunter series, not just TID. I ended up staying out of Ty's head a lot in LKOF because 1) he has a secret, too! and 2) there are things I want the reader to know about him that he can't know or be aware of and there is no way to convey that from his POV. We have to see it from outside because we know what he doesn't know. And 3) It's about the romance, too. I wanted there to be things Kit didn't know about Ty's feelings, and I wanted the reader not to know them either — not yet.
In TLKoF the bulk of the POVs are Dru and Kit's. But — and I know we may disagree — I don't believe POV factors that much into how important or central a character is. I do not think Ty is less of a main character in book 1 because we do not get his POV as often. I would have said that after James and Cordelia, Matthew was the most important character in The Last Hours and we never saw his POV at all.
And yes, as a neurotypical person, it is of concern to me how I write and portray Ty. I used multiple sensitivity readers to read for Ty in this book, a mix of people I know and people who do this professionally. I think people imagine that sensitivity readers are only necessary for scenes from Ty's point of view, but most of the readers' notes were on the sections not from his POV, because we learn about Ty, how he thinks and why he does things, from his behavior and his dialogue. We hear much more from him about his thoughts, feelings, emotions, habits, and the way he does things than we ever learned about him in TDA, and we learn the majority of them in scenes not from his POV.
Some people have asked if being worried about writing Ty correctly made writing his POV less positive or fun, but no, it didn't! I really love writing Ty because he has a lot of qualities I love; I'm just also worried about it. So far in LPOH his POV shows up the same amount as everyone else's and I'm enjoying it a lot.
If at the end of TLKOF you feel like you didn't get enough Ty POV and you want more, that's good — because you will get more, and at that point, there will actually be specific mysteries that you want addressed and they will be. Structurally, it didn't make sense to spend a lot of time in Ty (or Ash's) heads in LKOF, so when we do see their thoughts in LPOH, I think it's more enjoyable because we are getting the answer to what they were feeling during events we actually observed, and getting them earlier would be like reading the last page of a mystery first. (I know you're out there, people who do that! For shame! :) It's certainly more enjoyable for me as a writer to be able to hold some mystery back for maximum fun, and in the end we all do write the kind of stories we ourselves like to read and to create: we can't really do otherwise.
I'm off to Bookcon this week so not too around but I'll be back next week with some fun snippets from the Bookcon sampler! In the meantime, you have this giant novel of an answer to read.
I'm sorry if things haven't been great lately; I think it's been a pretty hard time for a lot of people and I often wonder what we'd all do without imaginary worlds to get lost in.
Perfect.
Thank you for taking the time to write this 🤍
Do you think that in the next two books we might learn more about Thais's POV, or characters like Anush Joshi, or even possible "siblings" who are Ash's friends?And regarding Kit, do you think we'll see him forming new friendships or closer connections throughout the story?
We have Thais' POV in the first book as well as, once, the POV of one of Ash's friends. I can see why people are curious about Anush and whether Kit has friends because very little is known about what these folks have all been up to in the years in between TDA and TWP, so it is natural to speculate about people whose names you know. Might they be important to one of our folks? Thais is important to Dru, and Anush is clearly friends with Ty, but otherwise, we don't know.
And unfortunately the answer is I can't really tell you. I can say over and over that this is Kit and Ty and Dru and Ash's story and the others are supporting characters, but even then, there's going to be an attempt to figure out a heirarchy of supporting characters. I know that. :)
None of this is unusual, it's the product of waiting a long time for the continuation of a story! You start to imagine what might be in it and build theories around that. I've done it myself. I can only say that there's no way to really guess what happens in a next-book-in-a-series because there can always be a new character, location, or plotline that has never been hinted at.
I will say that TWP is something of a unique case in that not only do we have our main four, but we have Thais, Jaime, the entire cast of TMI, the entire cast of TDA, and a chunk of the cast of TID as well as characters from TEC who all have to play some part in the story and be relevant. So I think this is a slight situation of Be Careful What You Wish For. Would it be fun to get to know Anush better? Sure! Would it be worth it if it takes pages away from Kit, or Ty or Dru? Or Magnus or Alec? Or Clary or Jace or Jem or Emma? Or the meaningful development of a different complicated relationship, like the one between Kit and Ash? Because that's a real choice that has to be made — alas, books cannot have infinity pages, even if we want them to. :)
(As for Kit and friends, Kit is dealing with the issue that he is distant (by design) from most Shadowhunters, and his mundane friends (who we know about, plus the maybe werewolf girlfriend) don't know he's a Shadowhunter so he can only be limitedly close to them. The big thing he's dealing with really is what it means to be the Heir, the descendant of Auraline, and have a power that is both useful and that he resents as something that keeps him apart from most other people. It's not as if he avoids friendships entirely by choice, really.)
Hi! I think this is in reference to the Kitty endpapers for the trade edition of Last King of Faerie? They are so pretty.
So, the choice to have Kit and Ty on the endpapers is because half the book is about them. I was so puzzled by the phrase "Dru and Kit book" that I thought we were discussing a different project and I couldn't figure out what it was! I think it's Last King of Faerie, but I would never think of it as a Dru and Kit book. For one thing, that sounds like they're dating, which I think we can all agree would be a bad idea!
For another, Ty and Ash are just as important character-wise. We spend less time in their heads (although we do see from both POVs) but that is not a marker of how important a character is but rather a marker of what secrets people are keeping.
"Will we have more amazing Kit and Ty scenes"
That's a very kind way to ask :) While I can't say what happens, Kit and Ty have countless scenes together. Other than maybe the first chapter or two of the book, before Ty arrives at Cirenworth, they are together in every scene that either one of them is in. Except sometimes one of them goes to the bathroom. I hope we will not judge them for being apart at those moments. :)
Kit and Ty are just as important as Dru and Ash and they get just as much page time, in fact, if you're counting pages they get maybe ten more. But I do think when you've come down to counting pages it may be more of an anxiety exercise than anything else!
I am sure there will be lots of Kitty artwork. I will certainly commission art, but most art is at the whim of the fanartists of our lovely fandom. I do not think they will let you down.
There are other editions with other endpapers that are not Kit and Ty — there's Dru and Ash, there's Livvy, there's the Seelie Court. But the main and most common edition you'll find is Kitty and we chose that because half the book is their story.
(I'm trying to be better about answering questions! Stay with me!)
I would like to focus on this:
“For another, Ty and Ash are just as important character-wise. We spend less time in their heads (although we do see from both POVs) but that is not a marker of how important a character is but rather a marker of what secrets people are keeping.”
On one hand, I totally understand.
@cassandraclare mentioned in the past that she felt uncomfortable (maybe that’s not the best word but it’s what I got) writing a pov of an autistic character when she’s not a neurodivergent person.
On the other hand - I’m disappointed.
I was expecting this series to finally open the door to this fascinating character’s mind, and while I’m thrilled that we will have some of his thoughts, I was expecting the full main character package. CC kept mentioning him as one of the main three characters.. so I’m surprised he’s been “downgraded” (don’t be mad, you know what I mean) to Ash’s position in the book.
ANYWAYS, I’m sure it’ll be brilliant regardless, was just hoping for something else 🤷🏽♀️
I think it's lovely that Cassie is definitely aware of you/your blog and I mean, you've spent years championing kit and twp! deserved!
Aw thank you 🤍🥹
Are we going to see Ty learn about autism?
You won't see him learn it so much as he already knows about it. In the first scene with him, he discusses what it means for him in terms of his work at the Scholomance, and we later see him thinking about and discussing what it is like in terms of being a neurodivergent Shadowhunter. Kit has also read a ton about it as has Ty's whole family. He does explain why he does things a certain way sometimes, but never to anyone who has no context for it. It's more a "this is me and how I do things" — he never feels bad about it, and never has to excuse any part of himself. There are ways in which it makes him a better Shadowhunter, and that's explored a bit too.
would you be able to give us any kit snippet??? pretty please with sugar on top??? 🥹🙏🏼
My publisher is being VERY STERN about snippets. Sharing anything beyond "Kit put on his jacket" would require me to Ask Permission. He does put on his jacket a lot though.
Iconic 😂
Do Jem and Tessa know about Kit and Ty? Do we see more about them as Kit's parents?
They know Kit and Ty had a fight and that things are weird between them. They are not dumb, and know there was a romantic aspect to Kit and Ty's relationship even if they think Kit and Ty themselves might not have known that. Without being able to answer any questions about whether they are even around to see Kit and Ty's relationship develop in TLKOF I am sort of stuck saying anything else. :) We do see how the Carstairs-Herondale family functions a bit though. They're very cute.
So faerie 😒
I can’t believe Kit is taller.
Such a beautiful date:
The first draft is done!!!!!!
YES!!!!
It means that we’re just a few months from:
1. A release date
2. The only heavily marketed campaign we’re actually looking forward to. I’ve never wanted to spend my money on special editions like I do for this goddamn book 👌🏾
3. Non stop CONTENTTTTTT! Finally! no more begging for scraps of information!
What are you most looking forward to? Other than.. the book, you know 😎
Let me tell you something: this September I’ll be a 37 years old MOTHER, and I’m still so excited about these characters.
Thank you @cassandraclare 🤍
A birthday snippet from LKOF
For Ro...
“Kit.” The voice sounded as if it was coming from very far away. Not Ty’s voice, either. Kit felt as if ice had been injected into his veins, but he forced himself to roll over onto his back.
Ty was there, a silver knife in his hand. He ducked his head and started cutting away the rope around Kit’s waist. Hovering just behind him was Livvy, half-translucent, her hair floating around her as if she were underwater just as Kit had been.
“Kit, you have to get up,” she was saying. Kit had seen a lot of ghosts in his life, but never one as clearly panicked as Livvy was now. “They’re here, they followed you —“
The words echoed inside Kit’s head, all sound and no sense. Follow, follow, follow. He caught at Ty’s wrist just as the rope fell away.
@cassandraclare my birthday is on September 1st 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 can I get another Kitty moment?
ALMA THE SNIPPET
I KNOW 🫨
I don’t even have anything smart to say, just LET US HAVE IT COME ONNNNNNNN 😭
Omg Alma, have you seen the new TWP snippet? 😍😍😍😍
Which one? I’ve seen one that wasn’t confirmed a few weeks ago so not sure to which one you meant 🤔
letters unsent
Ty, Ty, Ty.
Your name looks strange written out like that. Like an abbreviation. But Tiberius would be so formal. I never think of you that way. Or, I suppose I should say, I never thought of you that way. Tenses matter in these situations, I guess.
It’s late, past midnight, and I’m sitting on the windowsill in my bedroom at Cirenworth....
I mean, can’t say I don’t have a bunch of those myself to go along with these old things 👀
YOU GUYS I just saw on IG that people started receiving their headstart books WITH THE FIRST CHAPTER OF TWP!!!
If anyone has it, please please PLEASEEEE share it with us? 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾