Maggie Stiefvater (Awesome Women)

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I thought today I would write a little bit about one of my favourite authors. The reason I chose to write about Maggie Stiefvater during my Paranormal Month should be obvious, as she's written a wonderful trilogy about wolves that are also sometimes people, as well as writing two books about really scary faeries. I'll get to her books in a minute.

What I love most about Maggie Stiefvater though, aside from her awesome stories, is that she's very creative and artistic and crazy in the best possible way. I was very lucky to attend an event last summer in Bath where her and Jennifer Lynn Barnes (another YA author to write about werewolves) talked about their stories and their writing processes and the entire event was such fun. Maggie stood on the table and said she gets asked a lot 'why wolves?' And she went on and on, dancing around the question and never really answered it. But everyone in the audience, myself included, didn't really mind and she's just really interesting to listen to. And I think it's funny that one of her main reasons for writing is the need to make other people cry!

I love that she's had such a fun background - with lots of music and artwork as well as the writing. She's also got two small children and a bunch of pets and I think if I were to choose anyone to have dinner with, Maggie would be pretty high up my list because I think she'd be an absolute hoot to be around and dinner conversation would be fascinating.

I first came across her books when Shiver was first being released. I saw the absolutely gorgeous green covers in the US and started getting excited. At the time, I did sort of roll my eyes a bit and think (only to myself, of course) 'Twilight rip-off' but everyone else's excitement about the book made me excited too. And I remember the feeling of reading Shiver that first time. I was so swept away.

(and just look at the gorgeous stop-motion trailer that Maggie created!)


I felt the impending doom of the weather, as it was getting slowly colder every day, and I was starting to panic that Sam and Grace didn't have enough time! It built on me slowly, this story and these characters that I hardly noticed how emotionally involved I was. And I loved the utterly sweet and non-dramatic relationship between Sam and Grace. Everything about it was utterly magical and I was absolutely DYING to read Linger and of course I got excited all over again when Forever was released. There are gorgeous trailers for Linger and Forever as well, you should definitely check them out!

And at the same time, her faerie books Lament and Ballad were being re-released with pretty new covers. And despite adoring Maggie's writing, I still didn't quite trust her enough to tackle faeries in such a way that I might like it. I'd tried other faerie books and I just couldn't get into them. I had decided that I am not a faerie person. ... until I picked up Lament.

And I loved it right from the first page. I loved Dee's stage fright and the music that she plays. I loved the mysteriousness of Luke Dillon and the fact that everyone gets his name wrong. I thought the unusual musical intruments (harp, bagpipes) somehow fit in perfectly in this tale of an unusual girl hunted by a faerie assassin. After reading Lament (and Shiver), I realised that I really need to stop making assumptions about books, especially Maggie's books. Because everytime I have, I've ended up entirely wrong and entirely loving them. I'm on the hunt at the moment to find my very own copy of Ballad now.

When I first heard that Maggie was coming out with another book, The Scorpio Races, I was very excited. I had extremely high expectations and I wasn't in the least bit disappointed. I think The Scorpio Races is my favourite Maggie novel so far. It has a great atmosphere, characters that I believed in, a sweet romance, but the bit I liked the best was the loyalty and the strong connection between the two main characters and their horses. I loved that so much.

I really hope that everyone loves The Scorpio Races as much as I did. And as much as everyone loved the The Wolves of Mercy Falls. I still have some catching up to do in otder to have read all of her books, but that's OK. It gives me something to do while I'm waiting for Maggie's next creation.