WELCOME
City of TO THE
BONES
AR T I C L E
CASSANDRA CLARE C
The New Queen of Fantasy
assandra Clare’s fantasy series about teenage demon hunters has sold more than 12 million books world-wide. This spring, she signed a multimillion-dollar contract for her next three books. Fan-fiction authors are amateur writers-now sometimes with millions of readers. After years in the shadows, they’re starting to break into the mainstream, as Alexandra Alter explains on Lunch Break. Illustration by Kagan McLeod.
Now some of her readers have grown so addicted to their favorite characters that they’re inventing their own stories based on Ms. Clare’s “Mortal Instruments” series. Ms. Clare, 38, isn’t bothered by the use of her characters. As a former fan-fiction writer herself, she wrote thousands of pages based on characters from Harry Potter and “The Lord of the Rings.”
Hollywood Reporter in Los Angeles, began posting fan fiction online after a friend suggested she write some Harry Potter stories. In her “Draco Trilogy,” Harry Potter and his nemesis, Draco Malfoy, accidentally switch bodies during a botched experiment in potions class.
“I totally support their writing of it,” says Ms. Clare, who lives in Amherst, Mass., with her husband and three cats. “It’s a huge compliment.”
The series gained a devoted following. She also wrote a parody of “The Lord of the Rings,” in the style of “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
Ms. Clare, who used to work as an entertainment reporter for the
Ms. Clare, whose real name is Judith Rumelt, got the idea for her own fantasy
books about a decade ago, after she moved to New York to try to break into publishing. A tattoo artist in Greenwich Village showed her some tattoo designs based on ancient runes, which were believed to grant protection to the warriors who wore them. Ms. Clare imagined a race of halfangel, half-human demon hunters who used magical skin markings to protect themselves and gain special powers. She wrote a novel about a teenage girl in Brooklyn who discovers that she’s
descended hunters.
M
from
powerful
demon
authors. Margaret K. McElderry Books paid a high-seven-figure advance for “The Dark Artifices,” the next three books in her fantasy series about demon hunters. Simon & Schuster UK Children’s paid a low-seven-figure sum for U.K. rights to “The Dark Artifices.”
argaret K. McElderry Books, a young-adult imprint of Simon & Schuster, acquired her first three books for $75,000. When the first book came out in 2007, with a flashy cover She signed a separate deal with featuring a bare-chested young man Scholastic covered in magic “I totally support their writing of it,” for a middletattoos, it grades fantasy says Ms. Clare, who lives in Amherst, series about became an instant best Mass., with her husband and three m a g i c i a n s , which she is seller. cats. “It’s a huge compliment.” c o - w r i t i n g with youngAfter her adult author Holly Black. third book was published, Ms. Clare quit her job as a freelance copy editor. A film adaptation of “Mortal She removed her fan fiction from the Instruments” is now in the works. Web before the books were released. Her fans jumped on the news. Some “I felt like it was juvenilia,” she says. responded with fan-fiction stories referencing the actors who have been Lately, she has been landing deals cast in the movies. that rival the contracts of blockbuster