Tumblr Tuesday: Cassie Clare News

I'm stealing a little bit of Sophie's thunder with her Twitter Tuesday posts. Cassie has been treating fans to all sorts of awesome posts on her Tumblr. Here's a few of the things she's recently posted:

Aww, it's James! Here's what Cassie reposted:

aegisdea:

I was inspired by the reveal of TLH! I wanted to finish Lucie but my body is giving up on me. Just wanted to sneak this drawing of James because I’ve been having the urge to draw him after I saw cassandraclare's pinterest for TLH. I wanted to draw Cordelia too and her freckles, because- just because. 

I can’t promise but I really want to do a drawing thing for them! I just love the pictures miss Cassie pinned. The laces and the dresses of the Edwardian era, good god, they’re so gorgeous! My hands are itching to draw them. Maybe after my finals, then and only then can I go bonding with my tablet. My hands are pretty much itching to draw the fashion and the hair. Aheehee. Can’t wait! 

Tata, wish me luck on mah finals!

James Herondale (c) TLH, Cassandra Clare

Trans* and Gendergqueer Shadowhunters

Hey Cassandra! I know I’m one of MANY adults who have fallen deeply in love with your characters and their stories, and I can’t thank you enough for giving me a much-needed break from the day-to-day doldrums! 

Here’s my question. You obviously are socially-conscious enough to embrace diversity in your characters, we’ve seen (or will see) lesbian, gay and bi people interspersed throughout your stories. I am a fabulously full-figured woman of transsexual experience. Any chance we’ll see a trans* character down the line? 

Can’t wait for CoHF, and I mean I Literally. Cannot. Wait.”

Hello fabulous. :)

Thank you for your way too kind words. I do have a trans* character planned for TDA. Right now I’m working on shaping her and figuring out what makes her tick and what her goals and desires are, so I feel like I should keep my mouth shut until she’s more finalized. But she is a badass. :)

A few others have asked about genderqueer and/or genderfluid characters; there is one in TLH — Anna Lightwood.

Anna, with her confidence and her rejection of binary gender identity in a more repressive time, has been a fascinating character to develop… Anyway, I hope you will like these characters! I’m currently buried under piles of research and memoirs in the hopes of not screwing up too badly. If any trans* or genderqueer readers want to share thoughts about what they do or don’t like to see in representation I would be happy to listen.

Q&A **COFA SPOILERS*

Cassandra, I heard that you said in Mexico City that Magnus would forgive Alec, is that true?

There seems to be a lot of semi-true stuff floating around based on my appearance in Mexico City — remember everything I said had to be filtered through a translation headpiece! I said, in fact, “Magnus forgives what Alec did but that does not mean they get back together.” I mean, Magnus is not a bitter grudge-holder so I never thought it would be a surprise that he would not be furious with Alec forever. :) So their chances of getting back together are exactly the same as before.

Hello! Um, so I was wondering: does Jace ever begin to use Herondale as his surname(even if just on paper)? Or at least does the Herondale name exist outside of Jace? It just makes me sad to think that the Herondale line will disappear after getting so attached to Will and Cecy.

— aquilaswing

All I can say is that the continuing existence of the Herondale name is addressed in CoFA!

 I know a lot of people on the Shadowhunter wiki, including me, are Downworlder sympathizers, and we were wondering, will we be learning more about them (like almost as much as we know about the Nephilim) in the future series? I’m optimistic that since Mark & Helen are half-fey, we’ll learn more about the Fair Folk in TDA. But more about warlocks would be pretty cool, too.

You are definitely right that you will be learning a lot more about the Fair Folk in TDA. They’re a big part of the story. They’re also a big part of CoHF, maybe in ways you might not expect? There have been some hints scattered through CoFA and CoLS about the part they play. And there is a big political issue that has to do with them toward the end.

TDA also features a new warlock character — the High Warlock of Los Angeles.

Ms. Clare, I recently read the snippet of Julian and Emma from COHF and the writing with their fingers really stuck with me. When I was younger, there was one year when my cousins and I went to about five funerals and to console each other in the pews we would do the exact same thing as Julian and Emma, and we still do to this day. Thank you for that detail, and for the books that brought magic back into my life. — make-dreams-your-master

Aw…I teared up a bit . .. It is a thing I used to do with my best friend when we were kids. Though we sucked at figuring out the letters we were tracing half the time and were like “What do you mean, is there any newts?” “Not newts! NEWS!”

* 1234 is etched on the base of Raziel’s statue, along with the Shadowhunter motto, above the entrance to the Silent City. What’s the year’s relevance to their history?

That is the year that Shadowhunters began looking better in black than the widows of their enemies. Previously when wearing black they looked only equally as good, or worse, than the widows of their enemies.