I recently had the opportunity to interview the incredible Maggie Stiefvater, whom readers know as the author of The Raven Cycle, The Dreamer Trilogy, The Scorpio Races, and The Wolves of Mercy Falls! We are here because the latest novel from Maggie, Swamp Thing: Twin Branches, which also happens to be her first venture into the graphic novel genre, comes out on October 13th! In the interview, Maggie talks about her experience writing a graphic novel, why she finds Alec Holland’s story intriguing, Dreamer Trilogy book two, and a lot more!
Hi Maggie! Thanks for being here! To start off, how would you describe your particular writing style to someone who might not have come across any of your work before
Dreamy! Complicated! Moody! Recursive! No one really knows what their hair looks like from the back, and no one really knows what their writing feels like to others. But those are some of the words people have told me about my own work. I can only tell you what’s important to me as a writer and reader: mood. I very much want to take the reader to one specific feeling and lead them around there in ever tighter circles.
Swamp Thing: Twin Branches is out on October 13th! What can readers expect?
An origin story about feeling intensely out of place in your own skin.
Swamp Thing: Twin Branches is the very first graphic novel for you! How is writing a graphic novel different from writing a prose novel? What sort of new challenges did you have to face?
I love whimsical language, and it felt daunting to have that tool taken away from me. But ultimately it was both a satisfying storytelling challenge and also a kind of gift. At the time I wrote Swamp Thing, I was quite ill and getting more so each day, dogged by what I now know was a pituitary tumor wreaking havoc. All I knew at that time, though, was that my body was a wreck, and my mind was too. Short term memory had disappeared, and language was slipping. Holding an entire story in my mind often felt like an impossible task. This was terrifying, of course, but it was also crushing on an identity level. I feel like I was made to write stories, and for the first time in my life, I was struggling to do that.
Because a graphic novel script is all story and no prose, however, I got to create a story even when story telling was very hard for me. I’m so grateful for that.
What intrigued you about Alec Holland/Swamp Thing’s story, and what inspired you to portray him as a normal teenager instead of the monstrous plant elemental he has been made out to be?
I think a lot of people might say there isn’t a lot of difference between a monstrous plant elemental and a normal teenager. And heck, maybe that’s actually what the book is about. It’s about not being able to understand each other, about not being able to understand yourself. That’s a very teen experience. I don’t recommend all teens turn into organic plant monsters, but I do think that if everyone can learn a lot by asking “is there a better way to communicate with this foreign-seeming entity I’m faced with?” We’re all aliens to each other, all monstrous to each other, and only finding out how to speak in common languages bridges that gap. It might seem like a less remarkable magic trick than it really is because it happens every day thousands of time other, but what an amazing thing that one entity can ever understand what another entity is feeling.
Without spoiling anything, can you tell us about a particular scene you enjoyed writing the most?
There’s a scene that I think is pretty 2020 that involves a bird and a box of purple ooze.
The second book in the Dreamer Trilogy is among the most anticipated releases of 2021! And so, I have to ask, can you give us a little teaser as to what’s in store for us?
Crime. Kissing. Art. Dreams. Cats with hands.
What’s next for you, aside from books two and three of the Dreamer Trilogy? Any more graphic novels on the horizon?
No, it is secrets, everything is secrets, I could tell you, but then I’d have to turn you into a plant elemental.
With the current state of the world being as it is, how are you putting up with all the new changes we’ve been having to make in our daily lives?
Like many other people in the world, I’ve coped by making myself a better schedule and also arranging for my car to have a bigger turbo. I also got two cats, one of whom set herself on fire last week (she’s fine)(the fire went out as she threw herself through the air at me)(I only bled a little).
Are you going to be doing online launch events for Swamp Thing: Twin Branches? What is the best way for readers to support your book?
You can find out all event info by following me on Twitter at mstiefvater or on Instagram Maggie_stiefvater. And you can get signed copies of it and all my other books at the indie store One More Page, who ships everywhere.
And finally, do you have any book recommendations for us?
I’m currently reading Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, which is about complex problem-solving as seen through the lens of medicine, and just finished reading Blood Child, by Octavia Butler, which was a splendidly uncomfortable collection of short stories.
