holly black alert

The excellent YA and children's writing-focused Cynsations has a short interview with Holly Black. They chat about Tithe and other things:

What was your initial inspiration for creating this book?

I had a visual image of a girl in the middle of a circle with the cuffs "softly burning" her wrists. I jotted it down on piece of paper and started thinking about why metal would burn someone. I remembered that iron burned faeries. I also remembered a short story that I'd written for a creative writing class about a faery changeling that was really more a very long vignette. Putting them together was the beginning of the looooooong process of writing TITHE.

What was the timeline between spark and publication, and what were the major events along the way?

Conservatively, it took me about five years to finish writing TITHE. I have about three completely different drafts. I really had no idea how to structure a novel. I had a very hard time learning the shape of a book.

This makes me feel so much better about still being in revisionland.

Go read the rest.

Some nice publicist type, send me an ARC of the sequel Valiant, okay? Puh-leeze?