Navigating the Shadow World: The Unofficial Guide to Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments

One must always be careful of books,

and what is inside them,

for words have the power to change us.

— Tessa Gray, CLOCKWORK ANGEL

INTRODUCTION

If you had to describe the Shadowhunter Chronicles to someone, you might be tempted to start with the supernatural elements: Angelic warriors! Demon battles! Magic runes! Vampires and werewolves and warlocks and faeries! And certainly Cassandra Clare has created a complex and fascinating world, one in which all the stories are true and yet surprises abound.

But of course it’s not only the rich mythology that has turned this series into a bestselling sensation. The Shadowhunter Chronicles are populated by wonderful characters (who doesn’t want to party with Magnus, watch anime with Simon, or talk literature with Tessa and Will?), and what makes the series truly shine are the ways in which their struggles reflect our own mundane reality. The books are about self-discovery, choice, goodness, hope, loss, and all the many wonderful and wretched permutations of love: whether shocking, inconvenient, all-consuming, uplifting, maddening, forbidden, unconditional, unbidden, unrequited, or all of those things at once. And it’s not all romantic love. Perhaps the most powerful love is the kind that forges bonds stronger than blood ties. In a world fixated on lineage and alliance, the strongest and most resilient families are those the characters create themselves.

This sense of family extends beyond the page to the Shadowhunter community among us mundanes. There are few fandoms that can claim such dedication, enthusiasm, and incredible passion. We don’t need runes of initiation or fighting gear, we just need the books and another fan to talk/rant/rave/debate with. Someone who has glimpsed Cassandra Clare’s Shadow World and understands the agonies and the ecstasies of having the Sight. The Shadowhunter community is a chosen family, one that welcomes all kinds.

Though many readers will know the ins and outs of this fictional universe, hopefully between these pages are some unexplored corners: from Cassandra Clare’s incredible story, to an examination of each book in the Mortal Instruments and the Infernal Devices, to the making of the City of Bones film and the cast who brings these beloved characters to life, to the fandom that keeps Clare inspired to write book after book. Navigating the Shadow World is for that ever-growing family of Shadowhunters.

Though Cassandra Clare has sold millions of books by spinning fantastic tales that draw from myth and legend, when it comes to actual writing, she is nothing if not a realist. She dismisses moments of golden light inspiration or a romanticized calling. Inspiration, when it does come, doesn’t come from outside of you. It comes from the work that you do, from the process itself, she wrote. She sees writing as a serious commitment, as a series of choices. And it’s that hard work and practical dedication that have taken her from a girl who read fantasy novels to a woman who writes them.

Cassie was born Judith Rumelt, July 27, 1973, in Tehran, Iran. She traveled all over the world with her parents, Elizabeth and Richard, and had been a resident of England, France, and Switzerland before she turned 10. As she moved from place to place, sometimes attending school and sometimes being homeschooled, books were her constant companion, and she often found herself dipping into her father’s science fiction and fantasy books, though she read in a variety of genres. She was introduced to oral storytelling by her father, who found ways to make stories part of daily life. Cassie recalled, My father was a great storyteller and he used to be able to bribe me to do whatever he wanted — finish my homework, do the laundry — with stories. It made me realize the great motivational power of fiction!

She described her younger self as really, really quiet, which is always a shocker for people who know me now. She elaborated, I was the quiet kid in the corner, reading a book. In elementary school, I read so much and so often during class that I was actually forbidden from reading books during school hours by my teachers. I’ve always thought that was something of a counterproductive measure. I mean, shouldn’t you want kids to read? Admittedly maybe not during biology class. At age 12, when she got her first computer, she started writing books, experimenting in various genres: I wrote a terrible vampire novel and a terrible mystery novel and a terrible romance novel and a terrible Arthurian novel, she said.

When Cassie was in high school, the family settled in L.A., where she kept reading and writing. At age 15, to entertain her friends, she even wrote a thousand-page novel called The Beautiful Cassandra, based on the Jane Austen story of the same name. (That story eventually gave her part of her pen name; her adopted last name is her grandmother’s middle name, as well as the county in Ireland she came from. Clary’s name was also a tribute to the courageous, quick-tempered Irishwoman.) One of the great joys of being so young and writing for fun is the lack of pressure and the freedom to write whatever you want, said Cassie. She credits a dedicated creative writing class as a huge boost to her development, noting, It allowed for a lot of personal attention being paid to each student’s work and a lot of critique.

Cassandra took more writing classes in college, but they didn’t have the same impact, and while she still loved writing, she assumed she wasn’t cut out to write fiction. She became a journalist instead, writing for various tabloids and entertainment magazines. She didn’t love the subject matter or the hours though, and she found her mind drifting back toward fiction.

Needing a creative outlet after her day job, she returned to the fictional worlds she loved and wrote fan fiction under the name Cassandra Claire. Her Draco trilogy offered an alternate-universe take on Harry Potter, starting with the Boy Who Lived switching bodies with his loathed classmate Draco Malfoy. The series offered a sympathetic hero in the canon’s villainous Draco, a characterization that became known as Fanon Draco, or, after a scene Cassie wrote that had the character in tight leather pants, LeatherPants!Draco.

Her fan fiction was enormously popular, but after she published the second book of the Draco trilogy, it also became enormously divisive. Cassandra suffered accusations of plagiarism — namely that she had borrowed expressions, dialogue, and scenes from other books and TV shows without properly crediting them. While fan fiction convention allowed borrowing from other work, it was expected that individual passages would be cited, so original writing and borrowed pieces were distinct. Cassandra hotly contested the accusations, pointing to her opening disclaimers listing works she mentioned or incorporated. She argued that her work was a pastiche, a form that intentionally imitates other work, and that using others’ material made an Easter egg game for her readers, who would try to identify the borrowed passages in the comments after a post. Since she was working as an entertainment journalist during the day, she argued she was well aware of copyright laws, and that one of the reasons she liked fan fiction was that it offered more freedom. After all, fan fiction operates with the intellectual property of others as a foundation, so she saw it as a gray area that supported this particular writing style. Regardless of her defense, after the plagiarism charges, Cassie’s account was deleted from FanFiction.net, where she had been posting her work. The author refused to let this incident deter her from writing, however, and she found a new home for it on FictionAlley, a Harry Potter fanfic site. There she released the third volume in the Draco trilogy, Draco Veritas. Unfortunately, Cassie has since removed the books, explaining to the Wall Street Journal, I felt like it was juvenilia.

She created another popular fanfic in The Very Secret Diaries, which gave The Lord of the Rings a Bridget Jones treatment, bringing Bridget’s signature style to diary entries written from the point of view of LOTR’s major characters. An example from Aragorn’s diary: Day Six: Orcs killed: none. Disappointing. Stubble update: I look rugged and manly. Yes! Keep wanting to drop-kick Gimli. Holding myself back. Still not King. Like the Draco trilogy, The Very Secret Diaries was wildly successful, and, since it appeared at the same time as The Fellowship of the Ring’s 2001 theatrical release, it drew many fans who were not fan fiction readers.

These online outlets became a place for the author to hone her fiction writing skills, forcing her to learn by doing and also exposing her to constant feedback from betareaders — the work’s first editors, who give it a rigorous once-over before release — and regular online readers. Cassie’s return to fiction was also fostered by a part-time job at a children’s bookstore, where she found herself revisiting books she loved as a child. Soon her own ideas for novels started bubbling to the surface, and she decided to move to New York City to pursue her dream of writing fiction.

FINDING THE SHADOW WORLD

Established in the Big Apple, a city that had always inspired her, Cassie was actively searching her new surroundings for stories. She was energized by the cityscape, and she explained, New York is such an enormous, vibrant, and dramatic city. It feels like it has a living presence of its own, and that’s very magical. Like Clary learning to see the Shadow World beneath the veil of glamour, the author got her first glimpse of a secret world she could create while visiting a tattoo parlor in Greenwich Village with a friend. This parlor had a unique feature: the footprints of all its former tattoo artists on the ceiling in paint. Gazing up at the footprints, Cassie imagined an epic battle between supernatural creatures. Her friend also showed her tattoos based on ancient runes thought to protect the warriors who wore them.

She connected this spark with a love of angel and demon mythology, specifically that of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. That heavenly struggle became, the author noted, the backbone of the world. Since Cassandra wanted to draw on that story as well as other literature and mythologies, she ended up doing extensive research. In this case, that meant everything from demonology to runic languages to location scouting in NYC. I read all sorts of texts about fallen angels and demons, a lot of faerie lore, and various myths, said Cassandra. What I discovered was that every culture has its myth of evil spirits or demons. Some are aspects of existing gods, as in Indian and Persian myths, and some are agents of some overwhelming evil force that’s locked in a battle with a single god — as in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — while in Native American mythology they personify the destructive aspects of the natural world, like tornadoes and earthquakes. I even tried some demon-summoning spells, but not with any success.

Despite these fantastical influences, Cassandra knew she wanted to keep her story attached to the real world, and she remembered the urban fantasy that had caught her attention as a teen. Cassie told the New Zealand Herald, When I was growing up in the ’80s there was a sort of cult movement of writers who were popularizing this idea that you should bring fantasy into the modern world. For me, that was much more relatable than traditional high fantasy, which was all very medieval with castles and knights. I couldn’t connect with that as a 12-year-old girl, but I could connect with the idea of children or teenagers running away from the real modern world to join a semi-magical world. Cassie sees herself as part of an urban fantasy tradition that includes authors such as Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, and Holly Black.

The city that had offered her inspiration would be the gateway to her hidden world. At the 2011 National Book Festival, Cassie explained, I believe all cities have a shadow self that I love to explore: forgotten buildings, places that nobody goes, cemeteries that have been moved or closed off, ruined old hotels, things like that that have their own spirit and still exist. We don’t use them, but I like the idea of the secret society that could see them differently than we do and did use them. But even if her day-to-day life offered inspiration for the setting of her book, she contends that didn’t make building the Shadow World easy. A lot of people feel like urban fantasy is a shortcut that gets you around world-building, because it’s set ‘in the real world,’ said Cassandra. But it doesn’t really work that way, as I found out. You have to come up with just as consistent an internal cosmology and magic system as you would if you were writing high fantasy.

Cassie spent the better part of three years creating the Shadow World, giving it shape, consistent rules, and populating it with the characters fans have since grown to love. Soon Cassandra realized she had an epic of her own on her hands. She recalled, The story — really the two main characters, Jace and Clary — came into my head and wanted to be written. I did think, ‘This is a big project.’ But I love reading epic fantasies and big fat books and so I really wanted to write one. I think you always write what you want to read.

Cassie knew for her that meant a forbidden love story. Explaining what she likes in a romance, Cassie wrote, I like lots of longing and unrequited love. I like to start a book and not really be sure what’s going to happen in the end, if the author’s going to mess me around or break my heart. As a writer, the idea of a love triangle was specifically appealing, because, as she explained in an interview with Holly Black, Love triangles are a fabulous thing for character development because usually in a love triangle if you do it right, the two prongs of the love triangle — your two choices that you can make — represent choosing different kinds of life for yourself.

She also knew she wanted to write for teenagers. In an article on YA fantasy for the Wall Street Journal, Cassie explained, In young adult fantasy, your protagonist is never merely a bit player: the magical world, newly discovered, is created for them, and they shape the fate of it. From discovery, to confusion, to realization, to control — it’s a fast-track through adulthood, with none of adulthood’s mundane problems, like refinanced mortgages, taking out the trash, or taxes. It also allowed her to contribute to a genre that had had a huge influence on her, and to tap into the excitement she’d felt as a young reader. She noted, When I was a teenager, that was the best reading time of my life. It was the time I experienced reading the most intensely and read the most widely and with the most excitement. I wanted a chance to experience that again through writing for teens.

Before she started writing chapter 1, the writer made sure she had everything planned out. While some authors say they like to see where the story takes them, in a world as complex as the Shadow World, it helps to have a plan. On her website, Cassie explained, I also write better when I’m aware of structure — when I know not only what’s going to happen, but when it needs to happen, when clues need to be dropped, and where and when certain things need to be emphasized or de-emphasized. I outline not just the series, but individual books, and not just the individual books, but each chapter, scene by scene. I also outline each character’s arc — where they start out, what they want when they start out, where their chief moments of growth/discovery are, and how they end up.

Even with plenty of inspiration, ideas, and a great outline, actually writing proved difficult at first. Cassie wanted every chapter to be perfect before she moved forward, so she wasn’t making much progress. Finally, she said, I decided to skip the beginning entirely and write through from chapter three, and for whatever reason that worked for me — I was able to work through building the world, and then go back later and establish that world more fully in the beginning, because now I really knew it.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL

After around a year of writing and revising, Cassandra had 10 chapters and an outline for the three books, and she decided it was time to start looking for a publisher. A common way for authors to connect with publishers is through agents, the talent scouts of the literary world who look for work with promise and bring it forward to publishers. Even finding an agent can be tricky, but Cassie was lucky: she attended a friend’s reading at KGB Bar in New York, and that friend introduced Cassie to her agent, Barry Goldblatt, and vouched for Cassie’s work. The agent agreed to look at what she had, and on the strength of Cassie’s draft, signed her on as a client in early 2004.

Goldblatt, a children’s book and YA specialist who represents authors like Holly Black, Libba Bray, Angela Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, worked with Cassie to strengthen her proposal even further, and by late 2004, he was offering it to publishers. In spring 2005, he sold the package to Margaret K. McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) for $75,000. Barry later admitted he’d never sold a trilogy on so little material — a testament to the strength of Cassie’s writing and ideas. Rights were also sold to a U.K. publisher, with the first book to be published in July: a rare opportunity for a first-time author. Cassie was very pleased with her agent, telling Blogcritics, He was all about finding me not just the best deal but the best editor who would help me grow my career.

That editor was Karen Wojtyla, and once Cassie had completed City of Bones in fall 2005, it was up to Karen to work with the author to make it the best possible book. Though the author/editor relationship can sometimes be difficult and requires a lot of trust, Cassandra praised her editor: She’s extremely thorough and very careful, but she’s also flexible and happy to compromise, and she has a wicked sense of humor.

Cassie explained the editorial process on her Tumblr: You don’t need to take all your editor’s changes, but as someone very smart once said (I think it was Neil Gaiman), if someone tells you what is wrong with your story, they are almost 100% likely to be right that something is wrong, though they may not be right about how to fix it. So if K tells me there’s something wrong with the story, I believe her, and I may take her way of fixing it or I might make my own. She also notes that after receiving her edit, she usually cuts around 20,000 words, and then adds another 30,000 to 50,000 words of rewrites in the new draft. Cassie also had the benefit of feedback from her writer friends, like Kelly Link and Holly Black. (See Words with Friends on page 23.)

Revisions for City of Bones extended until February 2006, when Cassie reported on LiveJournal that she’d completed her final draft: "I feel like I should probably be excited about having turned in the last draft of City, but instead I only feel faintly depressed and sort of bereft. Postpartum, I suspect. Not that I won’t have lots more pages of Jace and Clary and Magnus and the rest of them to write in the future, but nevertheless: first book, now done. No more prodding at it in the dead of night. I also feel as if all of my creativity has been sucked out of me through a giant straw, and there’s nothing left. Hopefully it replaces itself over time like blood, rather than not replacing itself like, say, a spleen." Luckily her creative juices did in fact replenish, because her schedule meant that she had to start working on City of Ashes before City of Bones had even been released. Meanwhile, her first offering was going through final edits and design, until, with a shirtless Jace supplying the fantasy to go with the urban on the cover, City of Bones was ready for the mundane world.

(© Rocco Staino)

On March 27, 2007, City of Bones was released. In its first week, it hit number 8 on the New York Times bestseller list, a phenomenal achievement for a first-time author. It sold so quickly that her publisher had to order a second printing within a week, and just six months after its release, it was going into its fifth printing. Along with this massive commercial success, critical response was largely positive. Publishers Weekly said, "Clare’s atmospheric setting is spot-on, informed equally by neo-gothic horror films and the modern fantasy leanings of Neil Gaiman. . . . This is a compelling story about family secrets and coming-of-age identity crises. Fans of the smart/chic horror typified by Buffy the Vampire Slayer will instantly fall for this new series." School Library Journal offered some criticism, but also saw its appeal: Despite the narrative flaws, this version of New York, full of Buffyesque teens who are trying to save the world, is entertaining and will have fantasy readers anxiously awaiting the next book in the series. During an online vote run by the Young Adult Library Services Association, teens voted City of Bones to the number 6 position on the list of best books of 2008.

In May 2007, Cassie started her first book tour, the Iron and Bone tour, with pal Holly Black, hitting bookstores and conventions, discussing her own book and, of course, the imminent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was a nice bit of symmetry, with the iconic series that inspired her coming to an end, just as her own was taking off.

CONTINUING THE TRILOGY

On the same day City of Bones was released, Cassie handed in the manuscript for City of Ashes. Not only did that mean a hectic schedule for the author, it also meant she had to write the sequel without many reviews or reactions to her first book. But luckily what most people wanted from her was simple: more. After City of Ashes was released on March 25, 2008, readers snapped it up even more quickly than its predecessor. The book debuted at number 3 on the New York Times children’s chapter books bestseller list and managed to hold its spot in the top 10 for several weeks. City of Ashes carried City of Bones on with its success, bringing it to the paperback bestseller list at number 7. Cassie took to her blog to note, "Listing with my first book was fantastic, but listing with my second book is in some ways even better, because it means people liked the first book enough to run out and buy the second, and the fact that CoA has moved higher up the list means the audience is only growing." Reviews were fairly positive, and YALSA’s teens voted it the fourth-best book of the year, a two-spot climb from City of Bones.

When it was time to craft City of Glass, the pressure was on: not only did Cassie have to follow her two bestselling titles, she had to wrap up all the narrative threads she’d been weaving over two books and almost a thousand pages. Though now we all now know the series would live on, Cassie didn’t know it at the time and she found it difficult to let go of Jace, Clary, and the gang. After completing the book, she admitted, I am sad — it’s sort of a postpartum feeling. You work so hard for so long and are so involved in the world you’ve created that when it is all over, at first you think, This is so great! I’m done! I never have to look at this again! Then, once it’s all bundled off, you get all sad and nostalgic because you realize that it’s really over. My editor feels the same way. I’m mostly sad about saying goodbye to the characters — I got pretty attached to them.

Exactly one year less a day after City of Ashes, City of Glass hit the shelves. With the release of City of Glass, the Mortal Instruments series was lumped onto the New York Times series list, where it hit number 4. It also reached number 3 on the Wall Street Journal fiction bestseller list, number 2 on the Publishers Weekly children’s bestseller list, and number 12 on the USA Today list. Reviewers remained somewhat critical, but didn’t hesitate to acknowledge the series’ strengths or its popularity, and the fans were overwhelmingly supportive, voting it to the number 2 position on the YALSA Top Ten picks for 2010. (It was beaten only by Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire, an okay fight to lose.) The series also got a boost with an endorsement from Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight series was still a heavyweight on bestseller lists and, thanks to the film adaptation, in box-office earnings. Cassie thinks the blurb definitely helped expand the audience for TMI: Once Stephenie started talking about [the Shadowhunter books], more people who are romance fans came to them. Before they may have looked at my books and thought ‘fantasy, demon-hunting’ rather than ‘romance.’ But really it’s a romance with an action-adventure background.

By spring 2009, Cassie had wrapped up the series, dominated the bestseller lists, and sold the books in many different languages and countries. Some authors would take a well-deserved break, but Cassandra Clare already had her next big series underway.

Cassandra Clare with Holly Black