![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Untitled-design-58.png\" "\\"Sarah")
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Sarah J. Maas is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the epic Throne of Glass<\/a> series and\u00a0A Court of Thorns and Roses<\/a>\u00a0series (ACOTAR). Her books are known\u00a0<\/i>for\u00a0their\u00a0powerhouse female protagonists and rollicking adventures.<\/p>\n On the eve of the release of her latest book in the ACOTAR series,\u00a0A Court of Frost and Starlight<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>we look forward to October 2018 for the final in the Throne of Glass series,\u00a0Kingdom of Ash<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>with this\u00a0candid and revealing interview\u00a0with\u00a0the\u00a0creator\u00a0herself.<\/p>\n 1. You started writing Throne of Glass<\/em> as a teenager and the final book is about to come out. How are you feeling about letting go of these characters after so many years together?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n So many things! Too many things! It\u2019s all a bit overwhelming, to be honest. I\u2019m feeling everything from pride that I accomplished this crazy dream of mine to total devastation that this series is coming to an end to just\u2026 pure joy. When I finished the first draft and finally wrote \u201cThe End\u201d on the final page, I just had this moment where I gaped at my screen. And then burst into ugly tears and had to curl up on the couch for a good while.<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever close the door to the world of Erilea, and there are already stories set within this world that I would love the chance to tell one day (one in particular is already scratching at the door, but\u2026 we\u2019ll see!).<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Your books are populated by some very brave and resilient female characters. Who are some women in your life who have been inspirational to you?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n I was very lucky to have been brought up by and around some amazing women, who never once made me feel like my future was in any way limited because I was a girl. They encouraged me to dream big, to work hard, and to keep my head up high. I owe so much to them – but in particular, to my mom (who encouraged me to read what I loved, and never told me I was too old to believe in magic), and my grandmother, who is a Holocaust survivor (with her own amazing story) and has filled her life with adventures around the globe – and ignited my own passion for seeing new places, meeting new people, and keeping my eyes and heart open to the world around me.<\/span><\/p>\n I think it was just something that I was born with – and definitely stemmed from my love of reading (my mom tells anyone who will listen that when I was a baby, she\u2019d find me pawing through my books – even though I couldn\u2019t read – just admiring all the pages). But I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was around 11 or 12, and read my very first fantasy novels (Sabriel<\/em><\/a> by Garth Nix and The Hero and the Crown<\/em><\/a> by Robin McKinley). <\/span><\/p>\n I read those books and knew that was what I wanted to do – why I\u2019d been put on this earth: to write stories about all those wild ideas and worlds running rampant through my head.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. What is your favourite thing to do when you\u2019re not writing?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Hang out with my dog, Annie! (And my husband, of course.) Honestly, just reading on the couch or binge-watching TV with her curled up beside me is my idea of heaven. I rescued her when she was 10 weeks old, and have spent almost every day with her since then (she\u2019s now 8), so\u2026 you could say that we\u2019re pretty attached to each other \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n 5. What were your favourite books when you were a teenager?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Garth Nix\u2019s Sabriel<\/em>, anything by Robin McKinley (but especially The Hero and the Crown<\/em>), Harry Potter<\/em><\/a> (I was thirteen when I discovered the series, and only the first three books were out, so I spent most of my teenage years waiting for the new releases and attending midnight release parties for them!), and Lloyd Alexander\u2019s The Chronicles of Prydain<\/em><\/a> (I swear, everything I learned in life comes from those books.)<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Last show you binge-watched?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Weirdly enough, I spent a lot of time re-watching Parks and Recreation and The Office while working on the final Throne of Glass<\/em> book. I think it was because this book was so intense (to say the least) that I needed something to make me laugh every night just to unwind and decompress.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. Pretend you have to pick one of your characters to be your roommate: who do you pick?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Probably Lysandra. She\u2019s pretty clean, has awesome clothes that I could borrow, and would totally be game to either go out with me on the town or stay in and binge-watch Stranger Things for twelve hours straight.<\/span><\/p>\n 8. What is your favourite type of scene to write?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t really have a favourite type of scene – but I love writing the payoff moments. Like, the moments that things have been building toward for the entire book (or series), and that I\u2019ve been waiting months or years to actually write. Sometimes those are sexy times scenes, and sometimes those are action scenes, and sometimes they\u2019re just\u2026 revelation-ish scenes. I think that\u2019s why I had such a blast writing the final Throne of Glass<\/em> book – there were so many of those moments for me, some of which I\u2019ve been daydreaming about since I was sixteen years old, that it was just\u2026 really exciting, and really surreal to finally get to put them down on paper.<\/span><\/p>\n 9. You\u2019ve said that Celaena was born from the\u00a0Cinderella\u00a0music, but Aelin was born from the\u00a0Swan Lake music. How does music shape your writing and why have you found it so important to your writing process?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Music inspires pretty much everything that I write, and I have no idea why. It\u2019s just the way my brain works: I hear a piece of music (usually movie scores or classical music) and I just see a scene, or a character, or an entire book. All of my books have sprung from pieces of music, and nearly every scene within them (and character) was inspired by it, too. The only way I can explain it is to tell you to watch Disney\u2019s Fantasia – you know how they took pieces of music and set them to images\/plot\/scenes (that are often completely unrelated to the original piece of music itself)? That\u2019s how my brain works. I hear the music and this stuff just plays out in my mind.<\/span><\/p>\n 10. What book(s) are you reading lately that you\u2019d recommend to your readers?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s been a super-busy year for me, so I haven\u2019t had as much time for reading as I\u2019d like, but I\u2019ll always recommend anything by Patricia A. McKillip, anything by Sharon Shinn, Madeline Miller\u2019s The Song of Achilles<\/em><\/a>, Nalini Singh\u2019s Guild Hunter<\/a> or Psy-Changeling<\/a> series, Sally Thorne\u2019s The Hating Game<\/em><\/a>, and C. S. Pacat\u2019s Captive Prince<\/a> series!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarah J. Maas is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the epic Throne of Glass series and\u00a0A Court of Thorns and Roses\u00a0series (ACOTAR). Her books are known\u00a0for\u00a0their\u00a0powerhouse female protagonists and rollicking adventures. On the eve of the release of her latest book in the ACOTAR series,\u00a0A Court of Frost and Starlight,\u00a0we look forward to October 2018 for the final in the Throne of Glass series,\u00a0Kingdom of Ash,\u00a0with this\u00a0candid and revealing interview\u00a0with\u00a0the\u00a0creator\u00a0herself. 1. You started writing Throne of Glass as a teenager and the final book is about to come out. How are you feeling about letting go of these characters after so many years together? So many things! Too many things! It\u2019s all a bit overwhelming, to be honest. I\u2019m feeling everything from pride that I accomplished this crazy dream of mine to total devastation that this series is coming to an end to just\u2026 pure joy. When I finished the first draft and finally wrote \u201cThe End\u201d on the final page, I just had this moment where I gaped at my screen. And then burst into ugly tears and had to curl up on the couch for a good while. Of course, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":80393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6677],"tags":[8803,8804,741,978,993,1007,2303,2615,8805,6780,8802,6791,6644],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Untitled-design-59.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80389"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80389"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80637,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80389\/revisions\/80637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/xa-court-of-frost-and-starlight-1.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.gQqJ1TC5vB-1.jpg\" "\\"Sarah")
<\/span>3. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n