Tell the Wind and Fire(82)
Nobody can ever tell me any different.
I know he did have a soul.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Lucie, Ethan, and Carwyn’s story started as a riff on my favorite Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, and readers familiar with both books will recognize similarities and parallels.
But whereas A Tale of Two Cities is set during the French Revolution of 1789, my novel takes place in a New York that never was and never will be. I transformed a few of Dickens’s characters, making a self-determined heroine out of Lucie and using the curious physical similarity between the two male leads to create a doppelganger and thus a world of magic and shadow selves. Fantasy is a tool for talking about the real world, and that is how I used it in Tell the Wind and Fire: as a torch held up to illuminate the divisions and misunderstandings between people, a way to give strange power to both my heroine and her enemies, and a device to underline how the heart can be torn between twin feelings of hope and fear.
Once Light and Dark magic were introduced, I had to ask myself what revolution looks like in a world with that kind of magic—perhaps scarily similar to revolution in the 1700s, or in 2016, because the shocking cruelty and astonishing grace in human beings stays the same.
I pulled at Dickens’s themes and played with his characters and gradually turned them into my own. Tell the Wind and Fire stands as its own story, and you don’t have to know anything about A Tale of Two Cities to enjoy it. But I hope that if you have enjoyed my book, you might find yourself drawn to read Charles Dickens’s famous novel.
More than that, I hope this story of divided cities and divided human hearts inspires you to create something, to forgive yourself for something you blamed yourself for, or simply to whisper to yourself, like a secret the world will learn, that you have a great heart and can accomplish great things.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The very first thanks in these acknowledgments have to go to my editor, Anne Hoppe. From the very first day, when we were on the phone and I stared at the wicker bookcase in my frighteningly cold house in Ireland and tentatively said, “Maybe a retelling of . . . ?” and she said, “Tell me what that would look like to you.” From before that, when she assured me she wanted another book from me, and showed me she wanted this book throughout, every step of the way. She believed in me when I did not believe in me, and believed in this book when I did not believe in this book. Thank you so much, Anne.
Everyone at Clarion, who have been so welcoming, and let me graffiti their walls and tell them all my strange marketing ideas. Thank you to Dinah Stevenson for the doppel-edit, Amy Carlisle, Alison Kerr Miller, the whole staff in marketing and publicity—including Lisa DiSarro, Anne Dye, Ruth Homberg, Merideth Wilson, and my publicist, Rachel Wasdyke—as well as my designer, Lisa Vega.
Thank you to Kristin Nelson and thank you to Ginger Clark.
Thank you to my copyeditor, Lara Stelmaszyk.
My writer friends know that I love them and their support is more valuable than oxygen, but here are some standouts: Holly Black, who sat with me and went, “No, really, explain this world to me, explain it now,” and stopped me when I suggested that maybe shadow creatures ate Poughkeepsie. That was a real suggestion I actually put on the table for this book. Obviously, Holly Black is my savior and hero.
Robin Wasserman, who edited a whole other book of mine while I was desperate and editing this one and saved me so much time and had brilliant thoughts I would never have had. Robin Wasserman can do anything.
R. J. Anderson and Karen Healey and Kelly Link, who read the book at various stages and reassured me when I was badly in need of reassurance! Such sweets.
And to anyone out there who loved Sydney Carton at age eleven, because you’re me, and I am you.
About the Author
SARAH REES BRENNAN is the author of the critically acclaimed Demon’s Lexicon trilogy and the Lynburn Legacy series as well as numerous short stories. She is also the co-author of Team Human with Justine Larbalestier and of the New York Times bestseller The Bane Chronicles with Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson. Born and raised in Ireland, Sarah is a world traveler who can be found in any number of surprising places, including a bookstore or library near you. She has committed a number of sins against literature, including once reading a rare first edition of a Charles Dickens novel in the bathtub. You can follow her shocking adventures at: www.sarahreesbrennan.com, sarahreesbrennan.tumblr.com, or @sarahreesbrenna.