Giveaways Inspirations and Influences

Nightspell Giveaway: Leah Cypess on Inspirations & Influences

Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free rein so they can go wild and write about anything they want: their new book, series or career as a whole.

Today our guest is Leah Cypess, author of YA fantasy novels Mistwood and Nightspell. To celebrate the paperback release of Nightspell (which we were thrilled to discover has a blurb from us on the cover!), we are delighted to have Leah Cypess talk about her inspirations & influences.

Please give Leah a warm welcome!

Anyone who is familiar with my reading habits knows that I’m a speculative fiction fanatic. If a book is fantasy or science fiction and sounds even mildly interesting, I will usually give it a try. I read other things, too – contemporary YA, historical, and anything funny — but 85% of what I read is speculative fiction.

When I was younger, though, I had another love. Mysteries. Specifically murder mysteries. Specifically, for a while, murder mysteries written by Agatha Christie.

She wrote sixty-six books. (I just looked it up.) I read every single one of them, from the chilling And Then There Were None to the devious Murder on the Orient Express to the tricky The ABC Murders. Eventually, it got to the point where I could always figure out who the murderer was; not by figuring out the clues in the books, but because by then I understood how Agatha Christie’s mind worked.

I used to think that mystery was the purest form of fiction. After all, you read books to find out what will happen at the end, and that is the whole point of a mystery – to engage the reader in the search to figure out what’s going to happen, or rather what has happened. I no longer think of books in exactly that way, but I still go crazy for books in which the protagonist has to uncover Mysterious Secrets Buried in the Past.

So as you can imagine, speculative fiction/mystery blends are my favorite thing in the entire world. Which is why I love Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro (adult) and Clarity by Kim Harrington, among others, and why I’m insanely looking forward to Gretchen McNeil’s Ten (a RETELLING of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie!), Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass, and City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster (the latter two both murder mysteries with assassins! Which happens to be a pretty good description of what I’m writing right now, too.)

So when I started writing Nightspell as a teenager, it was with a simple idea: what if there was a country where murder victims came back as ghosts to solve their own murders? That would not only change the way murders were solved – it would change the way they were committed, since the murderers’ primary concern would be to hide their identities from their victims. I envisioned an entire series of mystery books with murders set in this world being solved by the murder victims.

It took me ten years, at some level, to write Nightspell; my first start was a complicated mess that I eventually put aside in favor of other ideas. By the time I came back to it a decade later, I was no longer interested in a series of murder mysteries with a twist. I wanted to delve more deeply into the world, to talk about culture clash and difference and death.

But I still wanted all the elements of mystery novels: murders, suspects, red herrings, and characters who all had their own agendas. And most importantly, I wanted my characters to find Mysterious Secrets Buried in the Past.

Leah Cypess has been writing since the fourth grade, but before becoming a full-time writer, she earned her law degree from Columbia Law School. She worked for two years at a large New York City law firm, then moved to Boston, where she now lives with her husband and two young children. Leah Cypess is also the author of Nightspell, a companion to Mistwood.

You can read more about Leah Cypess on her website website and follow her on twitter.

THE GIVEAWAY:

We have one copy of Mistwood and Nightspell up for grabs! The contest is open to all, and will run until Saturday, June 2 at 11:59PM (EST). To enter, use the form below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

12 Comments

  • Linda W
    May 29, 2012 at 8:38 am

    I read Mistwood. Leah’s careful attention to details shows. I was glad to read about her process and how much she cares about the genre.
    BTW: I searched for City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster on Amazon and could not find it. Anyone else have that problem?

  • Kaethe
    May 29, 2012 at 10:20 am

    The Agatha Christie-mentions makes these a must-read for me.

  • Daisy
    May 29, 2012 at 10:41 am

    That was such a hard question!! I LOVE YA fantasy and to just pick one favourite…
    So exciting to hear Leah is writing a murder mystery with assassins!! Sounds really good 🙂

  • Taylor Lynn
    May 29, 2012 at 10:47 am

    Shockingly, though I’ve heard of them, I’ve never actually read any Agatha Christie books! When it comes to mysteries, though, I did read a TON of Nancy Drew books as a kid. 😉 The idea of ghosts coming back to solve their own murder cases is fantastically original – I love it! Thanks so much for the chance to win your books, Leah! 😀

  • Miriam Forster
    May 29, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    I love this! Especially since I too am an Agatha Christie obsessive. 🙂

  • Rachel
    May 29, 2012 at 3:25 pm

    Wow these sound so good!

  • de Pizan
    May 29, 2012 at 11:18 pm

    Linda, I checked Goodreads, and it says the expected publication for City of a Thousand Dolls isn’t until Feb 2013. I’ve noticed that Amazon doesn’t seem to list a book until it’s a few months prior to its release.

  • Candice
    May 30, 2012 at 11:44 am

    There are so many great YA fantasy novels out there. Just throwing out some of my favorites: Graceling series, Blood Red Road, Girl of Fire and Thorns, Finnikin of the Rock series, and Incarnate.

  • Marymick
    May 30, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    I LOVE Agathta Christie so I can imagine these books will be great:)

  • Bookish News and Publishing Tidbits 31 May 2012 | Read in a Single Sitting - Book reviews and new books
    May 30, 2012 at 5:21 pm

    […] An interview with Leah Cypress: “I used to think that mystery was the purest form of fiction. After all, you read books to find out what will happen at the end, and that is the whole point of a mystery – to engage the reader in the search to figure out what’s going to happen, or rather what has happened. I no longer think of books in exactly that way, but I still go crazy for books in which the protagonist has to uncover Mysterious Secrets Buried in the Past.” […]

  • Leah Cypess
    May 31, 2012 at 7:11 pm

    Thank you, everyone! It’s great to hear that there are so many other Agatha Christie devotees out there. I used to force my friends to reenact her plays with me. If only the internet had existed back then, I would have had friends I didn’t have to force…

  • Smugglers’ Stash and News | The Book Smugglers
    June 3, 2012 at 5:31 am

    […] Nightspell Giveaway: Leah Cypess on Inspirations & Influences […]

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