Welcome to my stop on the Such Sweet Sorrow blog tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours! I'm so excited to be a part of this tour and to share the awesomeness with all of you! Today I have a guest post by the author and don't forget to enter the giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, see the schedule at the end of the post!!
Such Sweet Sorrow
Author: Jenny Trout
Genre: YA Fantasy/Paranormal
Release Date: February 4, 2014
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Pages: 304
Description:
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, may not have inherited his father’s crown, but the murdered king left his son a much more important responsibility—a portal to the Afterjord, where the souls of the dead reside. When the determined Romeo asks for help traversing the treacherous Afterjord, Hamlet sees an opportunity for adventure, and the chance to avenge his father’s death.
In an underworld filled with leviathan monsters, ghoulish shades, fire giants and fierce Valkyrie warriors, Hamlet and Romeo must battle their way through jealousy, despair, and their darkest fears to rescue the fair damsel. Yet finding Juliet is only the beginning, and the Afterjord doesn’t surrender souls without a price…
The inspiration and process behind Such Sweet Sorrow
A lot of the questions I’ve been asked on this blog tour have been about the inspiration behind Such Sweet Sorrow. “What made you want to combine Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet?” “Where did you come up with the idea to make it a paranormal?” The answer to those questions are a little different than for any other book I’ve ever written, and the resulting experience writing the book has been truly unique.
In June of 2012, my agent, Miriam Kriss, called me up with a proposal. A guy out of Los Angeles named Nick Harris wanted to do a Shakespearean YA with paranormal elements, and would I be interested in working with him? At first, I was hesitant; I’d been approached by a publisher to write a vampire version of Romeo and Juliet in 2009, and I’d been very excited, but ultimately we couldn’t match up our visions for the story, and we parted ways. But I’d had so much fun and had looked so forward to writing that story, I was afraid of entering into a similar set up. What if I got excited about writing this project, and it was rejected on proposal?
Then I talked to Nick Harris. He was as excited about his mash-up of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet as I had been about the earlier project, and he seemed really eager to see the whole thing go ahead. However, our first conversation went something like him saying, “I’m thinking of Romeo and Hamlet going into the underworld to rescue Juliet,” and me saying, “Wow, that sounds amazing,” while inwardly thinking, This is going to go really, really badly. This is never going to work. This man is crazy.
Still, there was something about the project that seemed really promising and, in a moment of supreme ego, I thought to myself, Well, if anyone is going to be able to make this work, it’s me. Like I said, ego. I really wanted to prove that I was the right person for this book, so I worked up a proposal, sent it off to Nick and Miriam, and it was decided that I would write the book.
Getting started was way different than the way I usually write. When I write, I get an idea, I sit down and outline, and I start writing. Not so with Such Sweet Sorrow. There were calls and emails between the three of us where we brainstormed and shaped the outline together. Key decisions were made that I probably wouldn’t have made on my own—like the choice to age Romeo and Juliet up for the YA audience, or the inclusion of the corpseways in the story— because they just wouldn’t have occurred to me. Sometimes, one of us would be clinging to the original story lines too hard, and we’d have to step back and let go. It was such an exciting process, because I’d always imagined team writing as being the most horrible thing imaginable. I know that co-authors are a thing, but I’d always thought I would rather cut off a pinkie toe than have to work with anybody else, because in terms of writing, I don’t play well with others. But having other people to bounce ideas off of, and listening to their ideas—which I would have never in a million years come up with—was a refreshing change to the sometimes stifling isolation of writing a book all alone.
While the original concept might not have been my own, I was given free reign to shape the characters’ personalities, the features of the Afterjord and the mythologies represented therein, and the challenges the characters face. I read mythos from many different cultures, but I mainly focused on Norse legends, because Hamlet is the prince of Denmark and he and Romeo enter the underworld from that location. That turned out to be a great decision, because there are so many unique myths that don’t seem to have equivalents in other cultures. And slowly, bit by bit, I saw a whole story come to life before my eyes… and since it was designed as a team, it seemed more like a real world to me, because it included ideas that hadn’t come from my own head.
I looked to other re-imaginings of classic tales to see how they worked in comparison to their original forms. Merlin, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Clueless, Shakespeare in Love, West Side Story, all adaptations or expansions from original works, were in heavy rotation on my TV as I tried to figure out how the writers worked their own visions into the framework of the material that inspired their twists on the theme. Over time, the idea of working with iconic characters became less daunting, and I was able to see the line between where Shakespeare’s Romeo, Juliet, and Hamlet ended an my interpretation began.
The answer to what inspired Such Sweet Sorrow isn’t a neat and tidy one, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career, and I’m so very glad to share the end result with readers.
Jenny - Thanks so much for stopping by today and sharing the inspiration and experience of writing Such Sweet Sorrow with us!!
Buy Links: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
Giveaway Details:
(1) Prize pack of the 2013 DVD of Romeo and Juliette and the 2010 DVD of Hamlet + (1) signed copy of Such Sweet Sorrow. (US ONLY)
(3) Paperbacks of Such Sweet Sorrow (US Only)
(3) eBooks of Such Sweet Sorrow (International)
Week 1:
2/3/2014- In Love With Handmade- Review
2/3/2014- Black Words-White Pages Teen/Young Adult- Review
2/3/2014- The Reader's Antidote- Excerpt
2/4/2014- Angelic Book Reviews- Review
2/4/2014- Fantasy Book Addict- Interview
2/4/2014- Working for the Mandroid- Excerpt
2/5/2014- Taking It One Book at a Time- Review
2/5/2014- Forget About TV, Grab a Book- Review
2/5/2014- Dark Novella- Guest Post
2/6/2014- Sabrina's Paranormal Palace- Review
2/6/2014- Chapter by Chapter- Interview
2/6/2014- I'll Tumble For YA- Excerpt
2/7/2014- Such a Novel Idea- Review
2/7/2014- Refracted Light Reviews- Guest Post
2/7/2014- Literary Meanderings - Excerpt
Week 2:
2/10/2014- Janae's Book Obsession- Review
2/10/2014- Imaginary Reads- Guest Post
2/10/2014- Falling For YA- Excerpt
2/11/2014- Darkest Addictions Reviews- Review
2/11/2014- TSK TSK What to Read- Review
2/11/2014- Paranormal Book Club- Interview
2/12/2014- RhiReading- Review
2/12/2014- Book Angel Booktopia- Review
2/12/2014- Curling Up With A Good Book- Guest Post
2/13/2014- Moonlight Gleam Reviews- Review
2/13/2014- Addicted Readers- Interview
2/13/2014- A Dream Within A Dream- Guest Post
2/14/2014- Lovely Reads- Review
2/14/2014- In Vogue with Books- Review
2/14/2014- Fade Into Fantasy- Interview
This looks very unique! Love the synopsis and cover! Thanks for sharing and for the giveaway!
ReplyDeleteI'm fascinated by the concept of a HAMLET and ROMEO & JULIET mash-up so am looking forward to reading SUCH SWEET SORROW. Love the apropos title and arresting cover!
ReplyDelete