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Ask me a thing

You know how you said about stealing? Have you ever had an idea for a story or plot point or character or motivation and then read a book or series and found something very similar in those books? Do you worry that because you're known to like those books that they might think you copied them?

I used to worry about that a lot, but I eventually realized that there was always going to be a book like mine or one that had elements of the one I was writing — and it would usually come out at almost the exact same time as mine, if not right before it.

When Tithe came out, so did Midori Snyder’s Hannah’s Garden, a beautiful YA book about faeries, where a girl discovers she’s part faerie and is caught in a battle between two clans of faeries.

When Valiant came out, so did Adam Stemple’s Singer of Souls, a book about a guy who is living on the streets and shoots a powder into his arm that lets him see faeries — and who then is caught up in an ancient battle between them.

There is no way any of us could have known about each other’s books. There’s no way to control for the fact that sometimes stuff is just in the air. And in the end, none of those similarities matter because it’s how you tell the story that counts. All our books are very, very different from one another. How you tell the story is ever and always your own.

There are lots of classic elements that occur again and again in fantasy literature: magic schools, weapons with names, princes raised poor and unknown, etc. And each genre has a host of these, that can either feel classic or cliche, depending on how they’re used. I think we have to strive to add to the ongoing conversation that’s happening through the books that we write — to have something new to add, but not to worry over whether everything is new.

But, of course, I also get nervous about similarities. As I go forth to do the final revision (and its going to be a big one) on my first ever vampire book, I do worry whether or not I am adding enough to the conversation. There have been so many great books in this genre that I admire and that I imprinted on — Tanith Lee’s Sabella, Suzy McKee Charnas’ Vampire Tapestry, Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire just to name a few. Those are tough acts to follow. But I have to tell myself what I am telling you — of course there are going to be similar parts, but hopefully they will add up to a very different whole.