And what was interesting is for some reason as soon as I heard it I knew not only was it the girl’s song, but I knew it was the girl at the end of her story, which if you’ve read Let the Sky Fall, then you know the decision that Audra makes at the end, and that was what fascinated me. The song is supposed to be about an ended relationship and you’re feeling haunted by it, but I kept thinking, what if he actually sort of was being shadowed by this girl? And then Audra came to me from a song called “Misguided Ghosts” by Paramore. That song came on and it uses the word “wind,” which is probably why I gravitated toward it. That came up not long after I had woken up and had this dream of this word and kept thinking about this boy. Vane, there was this song called “The Haunting” by Anne Berlin that was about being haunted by a girl. It’s funny, their characters really took shape from two songs. (SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t completed the Let the Sky Fall (book one), skip to the next question.) Did you, at the start, just plan to have Vane or did she come along pretty quickly? HW: So you say that you originally came up with Vane before Audra, which is interesting because it seems like Audra is slightly more of a main character in the first book. She immediately said, “I love everything except the title, no, we’re not doing that title.” So I’m really good at titles. It was specifically the word “windwalker,” which was the original title that I pitched the book to my editor under. Every song I would hear on iTunes, I would think, “That could be related to him!” Then the same thing happened with the female character I realized that there would be a girl in the story and everything just made me think of her, too. I would picture Vane-at the time, I didn’t know his name-but I would picture him walking on the wind and I just kept thinking about him. From that point on, I could not stop thinking about it and every time I thought about that word, I would picture this teenage boy walking on the wind. I woke up with the word “windwalker” in my mind. SM: This is when you’re going to realize just how boring my dreams are. I read in the acknowledgements of the first book that there was just one idea for this series that kept you up at night and you couldn’t sleep so you just started writing. While I enjoy that story, I kind of wanted to do something different, so I flipped it and this time we have a guy who is just completely clueless and the girl who is constantly kicking his butt and saving him throughout the series, which is very fun to write. In this kind of book, a lot of the time it’s this hopeless female character who doesn’t have any powers or abilities and then meets this supernatural character who then saves her over and over again. And I like to also point out that one of the funnest things about the series for me is that it’s a dude in distress. It’s not necessarily just a romance, but if you don’t like love stories, then it’s probably not the right book for you either. And then, of course, there’s a love story it’s sort of a little bit of both. It’s basically about air elementals who are caught up in this big wind war that’s been going on for a while and that one of the main characters is very crucial to, even though he has no knowledge or training of his world. SM: Yeah! When you have to do that elevator pitch, I call it Last Airbender meets Twister with kissing. Could you give us a quick rundown of the basic need-to-know facts of the series as a whole? HW: We’re here to talk about your newly completed Sky Fall series that finished with the release of Let the Wind Rise. HW: Hadley Willman (from the Teen Advisory Board) (Any of her responses that contain specific spoilers will be preceded by a warning.) The two series under her name are the ongoing middle grade Keeper of the Lost Cities series and the newly completed YA series she’s here today to talk about, Sky Fall. In August, one of our teen reviewers got the chance to snag a Skype interview with Shannon Messenger, one of the authors who will be featured at our annual Pasadena Loves YA book festival on September 17.
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