Here’s how it began:

In October 2008, I had dinner with my agent. And I told her that I hoped to be a big enough writer one day to write the book I’ve been itching to write for years. The conversation went something like this:

AGENT: What book?

ME: It’s about an anorexic teenage girl who becomes Famine of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

AGENT: [PAUSES] So why haven’t you written it yet?

ME: Um. Well. No one wants to read about eating disorders.

AGENT: Of course they do!

ME: I guess I should write it.

AGENT: I guess you should.

So I stopped working on two other novels and started thinking through the book that would be called HUNGER. It took me two false starts before I knew who the main character was. Once I found her, the first scene came pouring out. Then I wound up changing the setting of the story — originally, it opened in a hospital wing; now it opens in the protagonist’s bedroom. And then the first three chapters practically wrote themselves.

Another pause, this time for me to really get the worldbuilding. When you’re writing anything — but especially when writing anything with fantasy — you need to know the rules of the world you’re creating. In my case, I had to understand the purpose of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (You may be thinking: “Come on, the purpose is to herald the start of Armageddon. You know, the end of everything.” And to that I say: “Heh heh heh.”) Once I figured them out…the rest of the book just happened.

It took me four weeks to write. After letting it simmer for about ten years. (Please don’t wait ten years to write a book. Really. If you have a story in you, get it out.) And then I gave the draft of HUNGER to my critique partner. And she said she loved it. (She also said she loved the character Death. And later, she gave me the most fantabulous present ever. But that’ll be another blog post.) With my CP’s blessing, I gave HUNGER to my agent.

My agent stayed up all night to read it. (I love her.)

A few months later, HUNGER sold to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. And you’ll see the results in fall 2010.

---

Tags: Hunger, Jackie Morse Kessler

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Hunger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.