(I like authors who write magically about magic.) My favorite authors write fantasy, I’m realizing, as I make this list: Neil Gaiman, Lev Grossman, Margo Lanagan, Dave Duncan, Brian K. And interrogating my own response. How would it really feel to have a strange old man take you away from everything you’ve ever known because he needed you to fight a war that started before you were even born? I guess you asked how this inspired Carry On … After living with these stories for so long, I found myself really interrogating them. Or look in my eyes and know that only I was pure enough to carry the one ring. I wanted some strange old man to find me in the desert and offer me a lightsaber. So I think I had a huge appetite for all these Chosen One stories (and for every Disney princess movie). You never know when you’re going be to called into duty.Īnd wouldn’t it be wonderful be that chosen person? There’s so much clarity in being the Chosen One. And I remember feeling like – you have to be ready for that.
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To be the one person God was counting on to build the ark or lead His people out of slavery. That’s a common theme in the Bible – to be chosen for a specific mission. I grew up in a strict evangelical Christian house, and I was always drawn to this idea of being chosen. Then The Lord of the Rings movies and Buffy. I got very into some Arthurian legend stuff for a while. Star Wars was my favorite anything-everything for twenty years.
CARRY ON RAINBOW ROWELL FULL
What are some of your favorite fantasy series, and how did they inspire you? Harry Potter is obviously one inspiration for the World of Mages, but were there others? (This is your invitation to go Full Nerd on us.)Įverything starts with Star Wars on me. That did surprise me, how quickly it turned into a whole book.Ĭarry On is your fifth book, but your first that’s pure fantasy. I’ve always inhaled Chosen One stories, and I just had a lot that I wanted to say. He’s melodramatic and self-loathing, and he makes me laugh.Īt first I was just going to write a really short thing – like a 10,000-word short story showing Baz and Simon falling in love.īut once I got started, I realized that I wanted to take on the whole world of Simon Snow – and that I especially wanted to write about what it means to be a Chosen One. He’s unlike any other character I’ve written, and he was already my favorite character to write. A painting on the wall inside a larger painting.Īnd I kept thinking about what I would do with them, how I would tell their story. In Fangirl, I was always writing about Simon and Baz through other characters. Rainbow Rowell: I think I felt like I’d created these characters and this whole world, but I’d never gotten to play around in it.
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Why did these two characters mean so much to you, and were you at all surprised to find yourself continuing their story? Nicole Chung: In your Author’s Note at the end of Carry On, you wrote that after creating Simon and Baz and telling some of their story in Fangirl, you just weren’t ready to let go of them. Leslie” found in Fangirl. This book - Rainbow Rowell’s fifth, and her first work of fantasy - is the story of “the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen” as well as an epic romance between longtime foes who find they are far more than friends. Last week, Rainbow and I discussed why she decided to return to these characters, what it was like to write her first fantasy novel, how she gets work done with all the other demands on her time, and why she loves Twitter so dang much. But Carry On is not a book-length version of Cather’s fanfiction, nor does it much resemble the excerpts from the “real” Simon Snow novels by “Gemma T. Carry On, Rainbow Rowell’s new novel (out today!), is the much anticipated tale of Simon Snow and Tyrannus Basilton (“Baz”) Pitch, magicians and roommates whose adventures at Watford School of Magicks so inspired Cather, the college student and writer at the center of Rowell’s 2013 novel Fangirl.