News & Blog by Marianne de Pierres
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
As a parent or teacher the following couple of questions might resonate. You send your teens to a place where there are no rules and no limits - is this book about teenage anarchy? Are you being irresponsible writing a book where teens are in a broken society? Well, actually, no. Burn Bright is about a teen forging her own way, self-regulating when there are no guidelines. My main...
Are the Ripers vampires? It’s a question that I’m starting to get a lot. They glide silently across floors, they are tall, strong, beautiful, ageless and they live in perpetual darkness. They exist in a world of bats, black, lace, velvet, but my answer is simply … read the books and find out. Their true identity is one of the key reveals at the end of the trilogy. I suggest...
Deserted churches figure largely in the novel, Burn Bright, as well - not merely because as buildings they provide evocative architecture, but because they help build a sense of the forbidden and mysterious. At thirteen I was lucky enough to travel to Europe and was indelibly imprinted with images of the basilicas and churches in Italy. They made an impression that lasted thirty...
As I said yesterday Burn Bright went through many versions. But some elements were there from the start. The physical nature of Ixion was one. It was always an island in my mind – perhaps because I’d lived recently on an island myself and was still enamoured with its ambience. But it also reflected my interest in nocturnal lifestyles and how they affect the people and creatures that inhabit...
It seems kind of strange for a science fiction writer turned to crime writing to suddenly pop up with a teen novel. But Burn Bright has been with me for so long I feel like I’ve been writing it all my life. I actually started putting words on the page seven years ago and the story wound through various incarnations until it became what it is today. While I’ve been on tour talking to school kids, it’s...
