Q. Rapture is the fourth and final book in the best-selling Fallen series—how does it feel to have finished writing this story?
A. I wept while writing this book—a first for me. At this point, I just feel joy at getting to share the story. I’m ready to release Luce and Daniel into the universe. The three of us do each other proud in this book: Luce transforms into an inspiring force of nature and Daniel proves himself worthy of her love. These two outcomes were not inevitable at the start of the series. I have given them an ending I think is worthy of their journey--it was the only possible ending for them. I hope it makes readers say, “Yes, that’s right.”
This sense of closure does not extend to the other characters in the series. I’m working on a new book now, set in a completely different world, with an unrelated cast of characters. The other day I was writing a scene, and I kept having to stop myself from thinking: You know who’d know just what to say here? Roland!
Q. In Rapture we finally find out how Daniel and Lucinda meet—I won’t spoil it, but I will say it was an amazing revelation. (I did not see it coming, and I totally cried.) When you started writing Fallen, did you already know how Daniel and Luce first met? Or was it something that came to you while you were writing?
A. It was Luce who determined that this first meeting become so revelatory, not me. I didn’t realize how much it mattered until she kept bringing it up. (Having parted ways with the cast of Fallen, I see how the characters’ autonomies resided at the limits of my subconscious. When it seemed as if a character knew more about a situation than I did, I learned to follow his or her instinct to the edge of the universe.) In Passion, the at-first-sight moment’s elusiveness was like a delicious cupcake floating in front of a winged horse: If only Luce could work hard enough, go back far enough in time, she was bound to find it. And it was bound to tell her everything, right? This is a girl, remember, who’s had hundreds of lives, hundreds of origins, but she was looking for the most primal one, the source.
I didn’t know the details of Luce and Daniel’s first meeting until I wrote them. I knew there would be a moment when she would think she’d arrived at the start of all her love, which would feel strangely hollow and lacking. When Luce finally arrives at the source—like most elusive, long-sought goals—it’s not what she was expecting. By then her perspective has shifted so radically that a thousand other things matter more than the first moment she laid eyes on Daniel. But she still needed to get there, to realize how much she’d grown. It’s good to have ambitious goals in life, if only to be usefully disillusioned when you realize them.
Q. Luce and Daniel have a love that transcends time, but throughout the series, Luce is still very much a normal modern girl, with normal insecurities and problems. How do you hope Luce’s metamorphosis in Rapture might resonate with young women today? A. Evolution of character is happening to all of us all the time. Whether we welcome or reject it determines the nature of our evolution, but nothing stops us from changing. All change is not progress—Luce makes missteps throughout the series—but there is one way that she is consistently admirable: She’s open to change. Her metamorphosis at the end of Rapture did not surprise me. I don’t mean -- From Amazon.com Amazon.com Review
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