CANR
WORK TITLE:
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://kendareblake.com/
CITY: Kent
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 385
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. July, 1980, in South Korea; adopted and raised in Cambridge, MN; married Dylan Zoerb, 2009.
EDUCATION:Ithaca College, B.S., 2002; Middlesex University, London, master’s degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
AWARDS:Teen’s Top Ten citation, Young Adult Library Services Association, 2022, for All These Bodies.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies and collective novels, including Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader, edited by Cassandra Clare, SmartPop/BenBella Books, Inc. (Dallas, TX), 2012; Slasher Girls and Monster Boys, selected by April Genevieve Tucholke, Dial Books/Penguin Group (New York, NY), 2015; Violent Ends: A Novel in Seventeen Points of View, Simon Pulse (New York, NY), 2015; The Truth Is Out There, edited by Jonathan Maberry, IDW (San Diego, CA), 2016; and His Hideous Heart: Thirteen of Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Hideous Tales Reimagined, edited by Dahlia Adler, Flatiron Books (New York, NY), 2019. Contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including Expanded Horizons, Momaya Press Annual Review, and Mirror Dance.
SIDELIGHTS
Kendare Blake is the author of popular and critically acclaimed genre fiction. Her novels and short stories are noted for their mix of darkness, violence, and psychological insight. Adopted from South Korea at the age of seven months, Blake was raised in the United States in the small city of Cambridge, Minnesota, by Caucasian parents. Blake received a bachelor’s degree in business from Ithaca College and later went on to earn a master’s degree in writing from Middlesex University in London. In addition to her novels, Blake’s short fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the Momaya Press Annual Review and Mirror Dance magazine. She has also contributed to anthologies and to the multiauthor novel Violent Ends: A Novel in Seventeen Points of View.
Blake’s debut novel, Sleepwalk Society, set in the summer of 2002, is the story of three teens and their growing awareness of themselves and the world. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Violet, Terran, and Joey want nothing more than that their time of relative innocence should continue without threat. They spend their time getting high together and trying to avoid facing the harsh realities of a world that no longer feels stable or welcoming.
But it is impossible for the friends to remain oblivious to the fact that life is often messy and complicated. Terran, whose life seems perfect to her best friend, Violet, struggles to live up to her mother’s rigid and overly ambitious demands. Violet’s own mother, who drinks heavily, has become paranoid about anthrax and other potential terrorist threats. Meanwhile, Joey hopes finally to declare his long-held love for Terran. To take their first hesitant steps toward maturity, the friends realize, they must be willing to risk doubts, insecurity, and even failure.
Anna Dressed in Blood and its sequel, Girl of Nightmares, are young adult horror books chronicling the life of Cassio Lowood, a teenage ghost hunter who falls in love with the dead girl he was intended to kill. In Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas is sent to exterminate the most lethal ghost he has yet to encounter: Anna Dressed in Blood, a teenage girl whose 1958 murder remains unsolved. Cas starts to realize that Anna is different from many of the ghosts he hunted previously, and as he digs into Anna’s past, he starts to rethink his mission.
Anna Dressed in Blood met with much praise from reviewers. A contributor to the BookYurt Web site remarked on Cas’s narration: “He is hilarious, in a dry almost British sort of way, not to mention smart, with just the right touch of authentic teen boy obliviousness.” The reviewer also noted: “This story is well paced and intelligently put together, with a compelling mystery that comes together wonderfully at the end.” The reviewer concluded: “This is a book that absolutely finishes the story and still leaves its readers begging for more, no trickery or sleight of hand required.” A critic on the Vampire Book Club website also commented on the narrator, noting that “the wry wit of protagonist Cas pervades the novel.” The reviewer continued: “His confidence keeps Anna from being scary and instead remains rooted in character development and progressing the mystery plot.” “The relationships among the characters, including Cas and his mother, are multidimensional and satisfying,” observed Nina Sachs in a review of Anna Dressed in Blood for School Library Journal. “Blake’s vivid imagery … is cinematic and compelling, as is the predictable but touching relationship between Anna and Cas,” noted Debbie Carton, who reviewed the book for Booklist.
“Effectively blending horror and romance, Blake … delivers an exciting and witty gothic ghost story,” noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. “There was a great mix of everything in this book from the witchcraft, romance, blood & gore, to the sarcastic humor from Cas,” observed a contributor on the Parental Book Reviews website. Anna Dressed in Blood “is one of a kind and could very well be a stand alone book, no extreme cliffhanger at the end,” added the reviewer. A reviewer on the Harris County Public Library Web site also praised the novel, calling it “chilling and haunting and beautifully written.” “A ghost hunter novel of a different type evolves in a satisfying fantasy packed with twists and turns of plot,” contended a reviewer for Bookwatch. “Teeth-chattering suspense and suppressed chuckles might attack readers in this superior black comedy/adventure,” mentioned a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
In an interview posted on the BookYurt Web site, Blake was asked if she consciously infused humor into Anna Dressed in Blood to give readers a break from all the gore: “I think so,” she replied. “I think I am naturally kind of like that, I’m kind of dry and sarcastic anyway, so that’s going to come out in my writing, but Cas is especially—he does lead such a dark existence, that if he doesn’t yuck it up a little bit, he’s going to end up on a water tower with an AK-47,” added Blake.
In Girl of Nightmares, Cas feels guilty that Anna’s self-sacrifice has saved him and his friends but cast her into hell with the horrible Obeahman. He decides to risk saving her, no matter the cost. He travels to England and meets Jestine, who has trained to become a ghost killer and wants to take Cas’s place as the next athame warrior. Despite some serious differences about how best to deal with ghosts, Cas and Jestine make an effective pair as they unite to destroy the Obeahman in battle.
A writer for Kirkus Reviews hailed the book as a “satisfying” conclusion to Anna’s story, and praised the author’s talent not only for exciting action but also for “delicious dry humor.” Debbie Carton, writing in Booklist, admired the novel’s “creepy, atmospheric landscapes.”
Blake’s trilogy “The Goddess Wars” combines teen romance with themes and plots based on ancient Greek mythology. The first book in the series is Antigoddess. Darkness has begun to descend on the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, eroding their superpowers. Once immortal, the gods are now growing sick and dying. Desperate to find a way to survive, they have begun fighting among themselves. Hera, queen of the gods, allies herself with an Olympian faction that is murdering rival gods in hopes of saving their own lives. Fearing the actions of these antigods, Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, goes in search of possible allies in the war that is looming among these fallen divinities. Traveling with her brother Hermes, messenger of the gods, Athena finds Cassandra Weaver. Cassandra is a twenty-first-century American teen who has no memory of her former life, millennia ago, as the Trojan seer Cassandra, who could foretell the future but whose curse was that her prophesies would never be believed. Though the Trojan Cassandra had been Athena’s hated enemy, the goddess now realizes that Cassandra, along with her boyfriend Aiden, a reincarnation of the god Apollo, will play a key role in triumphing over the antigods and ensuring the survival of the threatened Olympians. Athena must forge a new relationship with her former enemy in order to win her own survival and that of the remaining gods. Athena believes.
Reviewers admired the novel’s fully wrought characters and exciting plot. Judith Palka, writing in School Librarian, enjoyed the book’s mix of fantasy and myth with touches of horror and plenty of narrative tension. The author received particularly strong praise for her highly individualized depictions of the gods. “Blake does an admirable job of linking [Greek myths] back to a world where Gods and Goddesses roamed freely in the world and were either loved or despised by mortals,” stated Palka. Library Journal reviewer Ryan F. Paulsen observed that one of the book’s greatest strengths is its skillful use of parallel narration, with alternating chapters narrated from Athena’s and Cassandra’s points of view. Noting Blake’s “real affinity for the way history shapes the present,” a contributor to Publishers Weekly described Antigoddess as a “gory, thrilling vision” of the gods’ decline.
The story continues in Mortal Gods. Aiden/Apollo is dead, killed by Aphrodite. Mourning her beloved, Cassandra can think of nothing but avenging his death. Having discovered her supernatural powers in battle against Hera, Cassandra knows she has the ability to kill a god by her mere touch, and she sets out to use this deadly power against Aphrodite. Athena, meanwhile, sets out with Odysseus to find the warrior Achilles, who they hope will join their side. The narrative climaxes with a final battle at Mount Olympus.
Ryan F. Paulsen, writing in School Library Journal, found this installment of the series equally exciting and accomplished, pointing out that the author “expertly brings these ancient characters into the modern world” and creates an enjoyable story in which epic heroes and heroines prevail. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews, however, found “an undeniable feel of second-volume sag to the story,” yet acknowledged that “the series still intrigues.”
“The Goddess Wars” concludes with Ungodly. In this book, Athena’s alliance of dying gods and mortal warriors has splintered into three small groups after their defeat at Mount Olympus. Each is now operating independently to discover what has deprived the gods of their former immortality. From Thanatos, the god of death, they finally learn the truth. As Blake ties up the threads of her three-part story, a Kirkus Reviews writer observed, the results are not necessarily tidy. It is the Fates who have decided that the gods must die. Athena is left in the underworld, cradling the dead body of her beloved Odysseus. But Hermes is still alive for now, and able to help Cassandra’s friends, Andie and Henry. And Cassandra is still raging for revenge. The battered allies have not achieved what they had hoped, but they realize that neither have they completely lost.
Praising the book’s thrilling action and engaging characters, a contributor to the Gizmo’s Reviews Web site observed that Blake “in no way takes the easy road out of this series. She strives to push her characters to the absolute maximum, while giving them even more horror and shocking surprises to resolve. … Sometimes you need to push the envelope in order to truly entertain and show how deadly and awful this God killing disease really is. … There is nothing shiny or nice about going to war. People do die. Heroes do prevail but with consequences.”
Blake launched a new series with Three Dark Crowns, a dark fantasy set in a fiercely competitive matriarchal society. The novel, Blake revealed in an interview in Writers & Artists, grew out of “a conversation I had with friends at a book event. One of them is a beekeeper. … She told me all about queens and how they operate, how they decide to lay three or four queen eggs and then the first queen who hatches murders her sisters and takes over the hive. I thought, wow, good thing people aren’t like that, and then I thought, hang on, we totally could be.” In fact, the three young protagonists square off against one another to assert control of their ancestral kingdom. In Three Dark Crowns, wrote an Epic Reads reviewer, “Fennbirn’s deadliest queens must face the one thing standing in their way of the crown: each other.” “Each has a special prowess which becomes known … [in] their teens,” explained Sue Polchow in the School Librarian. “Mirabella can control the elements, Arsinoe tame the natural world, and Katherine has ability with poisons.” “None of them are prepared for the chaos that ensues,” stated Alex Brown in a review for Tor.com. “Hearts are broken, loyalties tested, schemes foiled, and friendships betrayed. The queens must decide if they want to play by the rules and murder the only family they have left or take matters into their own hands.”
In general, critics appreciated Blake’s adventure into a new fantasy realm. “The worldbuilding is … aces,” Brown enthused. “Fennbirn has a believable history, complicated political machinations, and varied social groups. Think Westeros for the YA set, minus dragons. Blake is also great at setting tone and building tension. Once the action finally gets going she delights in twisting the knife deeper and deeper. The shockers in the final act will have grave ramifications for the queens and their courts, and I for one can’t wait to find out what happens next.” “At this novel’s dark heart,” assessed Maggie Reagan in Booklist, “beats a story about … the unbreakable bonds of family, and ties that bind enough to kill.” “This is a story entrenched in deceit,” declared Zeying Wang in School Library Journal, “twisted by selfish desires for redemption and revenge in a crooked game.” “I would highly recommend this book to any fantasy lovers,” concluded a reviewer for the Teenreads website. “It definitely has some more complex fantasy elements throughout the story so it may not be the best for a fantasy newcomer. But … it is definitely well worth a little bit of struggling to understand the world in the beginning of the novel.”
[open new]The “Three Dark Crowns” series continues with One Dark Throne, in which the Ascension Year finds the aspiring queens turning sixteen and the balance of power steadily shifting. Mirabella’s elemental abilities have left her poised to take control, but Arsinoe gains the upper hand when her bear goes on a rampage, while rumors of Katharine’s death help set up an act of vengeance. A Kirkus Reviews writer noted that Blake’s “already pitch-black tale shades even darker” in view of the “escalating (and grisly) body count.” The writer reveled in the “tumultuous climax” and hailed One Dark Throne as “achingly gorgeous and gruesomely fascinating.” In Booklist Maggie Reagan affirmed, “With wonderfully drawn characters and a lethal, unpredictable plot, this follow-up will leave readers breathless.”
Two Dark Reigns finds the royal question settled: the new queen is Katharine, but Mirabella and Arsinoe have escaped to a mainland refuge. Visions of the legendary Blue Queen, however, urge them back to their home island, where people’s fear of the reigning queen has inspired a nascent rebellion—though the gifted woman leading it, Jules Milone, is prophesied to bring about doom. A Kirkus Reviews writer noted that the “barrage of intrigue, betrayals, spells, portents, and grisly violence unleashed in this volume almost overwhelms,” amounting to a “tragic, devastating, horrifying, enthralling” readerly experience. The series comes to a close with Five Dark Fates, in which Arsinoe hopes to rein in a curse on the rebel army, while Mirabella elects to sympathize with Katharine, and certain spirits are getting perilously riled up. A Kirkus Reviews writer suggested that Blake’s detailed exposition of the “legendary history of Fennbirn’s matriarchal culture” lends “greater depth and richness” to the otherwise “harsh, dark” tale. The writer summed up, “Things may not end happily ever after, but they do end just right.”
Blake’s horror thriller All These Bodies, billed as true crime with vampire, was partly inspired by Truman Capote’s genre classic In Cold Blood. Blake told Louis Galvez of Dead Darlings that her book is “based on two different crimes. It’s based on the Clutter Murders in Holcomb Kansas in 1959, but it’s mostly based on the Starkweather/Fugate murders, which occurred in January of 1958. Since they both happened in the late 1950s, and they both took place in small, midwestern towns, for the most part, it just seemed that the natural time and place to set the story was in a small midwestern town in 1958.”
The novel is set in Black Deer Falls, Minnesota, home to seventeen-year-old Michael Jensen, sheriff’s son and aspiring journalist. A string of unsolved murders that have left pristine displays of bloodless corpses culminates in the killing of a family in Jensen’s town, with the blood-covered fifteen-year-old Marie Catherine Hale found alive at the scene. Willing to explain her role in recent events to Jensen alone—while refusing to reveal the identity of her accomplice—Hale spins a yarn that defies credibility. With the death penalty looming over Hale’s head, the sympathetic Jensen finds himself in the thick of unfolding events.
In Booklist, Maggie Reagan observed that with All These Bodies, Blake “takes a sharp pivot out of dark fantasy for a dispassionate … chilling descent into the human psyche.” A Kirkus Reviews writer observed that while she nods to the supernatural, Blake “otherwise grounds the true-crime–style tale … in real-life issues like domestic abuse, poverty, privilege, and sexism.” The reviewer affirmed that All These Bodies offers an “insightful look at our morbid curiosity about murderers.”
Blake takes the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world to the next generation in the series opener In Every Generation. Frankie Rosenberg, daughter of Willow—a friend of the legendary Buffy’s—just might be the next slayer, if the missing “Aunt Buffy” cannot be found. Along with Hailey, sister of another missing slayer, and werewolf lacrosse player Jake Osbourne, Frankie sets her sights on figuring out what nefarious vampire Countess is up to in Sunnydale. In Booklist, Stacey Comfort remarked that In Every Generation makes for “a worthy successor to the Slayer stories,” succeeding “both as a love letter to existing fans and as a welcoming entry point for new readers. “[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2011, Debbie Carton, review of Anna Dressed in Blood; October 1, 2012, Debbie Carton, review of Girl of Nightmares, p. 88; September 1, 2013, Frances Bradburn, review of Antigoddess, p. 111; October 15, 2014, Frances Bradburn, review of Mortal Gods, p. 44; August 1, 2016, Maggie Reagan, review of Three Dark Crowns, p. 80; July 1, 2017, Maggie Reagan, review of One Dark Throne, p. 50; September 1, 2018, Maggie Reagan, review of Two Dark Reigns, p. 110; July 1, 2019, Maggie Reagan, review of Five Dark Fates, p. 63; August 1, 2021, Maggie Reagan, review of All These Bodies, p. 63; December 15, 2021, Stacey Comfort, review of In Every Generation, p. 95.
Bookwatch, November, 2011, review of Anna Dressed in Blood; July 15, 2015, review of Ungodly.
Children’s Bookwatch, March, 2015, review of Mortal Gods; November, 2015, review of Ungodly.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2011, review of Anna Dressed in Blood; July 1, 2012, review of Girl of Nightmares; July 15, 2013, review of Antigoddess; August 1, 2014, review of Mortal Gods; July 15, 2015, review of Ungodly; July 15, 2017, review of One Dark Throne; August 15, 2018, review of Two Dark Reigns; July 1, 2019, review of Five Dark Fates; July 15, 2021, review of All These Bodies; November 15, 2021, review of In Every Generation; October 15, 2022, review of One Girl in All the World.
Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2011, review of Anna Dressed in Blood; August 5, 2013, review of Antigoddess, p. 72; July 5, 2021, review of All These Bodies, p. 72; November 8, 2021, review of In Every Generation, p. 70.
School Librarian, spring, 2014, Judith Palka, review of Antigoddess, p. 62; winter, 2016, Sue Polchow, review of Three Dark Crowns, p. 243.
School Library Journal, November, 2011, Nina Sachs, review of Anna Dressed in Blood; November, 2012, Hayden Bass, review of Girl of Nightmares, p. 96; September, 2013, Ryan F. Paulsen, review of Antigoddess, p. 152; October, 2014, Ryan F. Paulsen, review of Mortal Gods, p. 114; September, 2015, Tamara Saarinen, review of Ungodly, p. 157; July, 2016, Zeving Wang, review of Three Dark Crowns, p. 79; August, 2017, Abby Hargreaves, review of One Dark Throne, p. 98; August, 2021, Tyler Hixson, review of All These Bodies, p. 86.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2017, Amanda Melilli, review of One Dark Throne, p. 69.
ONLINE
Author Turf, http://authorturf.com/ (February 17, 2012), Brittney Breakey, author interview.
Bec’s Books, https://rebeccagough.wordpress.com/ (October 19, 2018), “Two Dark Reigns–Interview with Kendare Blake!”
Bookriot, http://bookriot.com/ (September 8, 2016), Lucas Maxwell, “How Bookstagramming Returns Made Me a Better Librarian.”
BookYurt, http://bookyurt.com/ (August 19, 2011), review of Anna Dressed in Blood; (April 24, 2012), author interview.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Web site, http://www.carnegielibrary.org/ (February 28, 2012), review of Anna Dressed in Blood.
Cuddlebuggery Book Blog, http://cuddlebuggery.com/ (February 28, 2012), Stephanie Sinclair, author interview.
Dead Darlings, https://www.deaddarlings.com/ (October 16, 2021), Louis Galvez, “Meet Kendare Blake, Author of All These Bodies.”
Epic Reads, http://www.epicreads.com/ (February 13, 2017), review of One Dark Throne.
First Draft, https://www.firstdraftpod.com/ (September 23, 2021), Sarah Enni, “First Draft Episode #324: Kendare Blake.”
Friday the Thirteeners, http://fridaythethirteeners.blogspot.com/ (March 6, 2012), “Kendare Blake Takes the Dare.”
Frolic, https://frolic.media/ (November 17, 2019), Aurora Dominguez, “5 Questions with … Kendare Blake.”
Gizmo’s Reviews, http://gizmosreviews.blogspot.com/ (May 29, 2016), review of Antigoddess; review of Mortal Gods; review of Ungodly.
Harris County Public Library website, http://www.hcpl.net/ (March 8, 2012), review of Anna Dressed in Blood.
Kendare Blake website, http://kendareblake.com (December 17, 2022).
My Friends Are Fiction, http://www.myfriendsarefiction.com/ (May 29, 2016), review of Antigoddess; review of Mortal Gods; review of Ungodly.
Nerds & Beyond, https://www.nerdsandbeyond.com/ (January 5, 2022), “Interview: Talking ‘In Every Generation’ with Author Kendare Blake.”
Nocturnal Library, http://www.thenocturnallibrary.com/ (May 29, 2016), review of Ungodly.
NPR website, http://www.npr.org/ (December 19, 2011), review of Anna Dressed in Blood.
Parental Book Reviews, http://sites.google.com/site/parentalbookreviews/ (June 7, 2012), review of Anna Dressed in Blood.
PRA Publishing website, http://www.prapublishing.com/ (June 7, 2012), author profile.
Rex Robot Reviews, http://www.rexrobotreviews.com/ (May 29, 2016), review of Ungodly.
Teenreads, http://www.teenreads.com/ (September 28, 2016), review of Three Dark Crowns.
Tor.com, http://www.tor.com/ (September 26, 2016), Alex Brown, “Sanctioned Sororicide: Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake.”
Vampire Book Club, http://vampirebookclub.net/ (December 15, 2011), review of Anna Dressed in Blood.
Writers & Artists, https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/ (June 7, 2017), author interview.
Kendare Blake is the author of several novels and short stories, most of which you can find information about via the links above. Her work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She was born in July (for those of you doing book reports) in Seoul, South Korea, but doesn’t speak a lick of Korean, as she was packed off at a very early age to her adoptive parents in the United States. That might be just an excuse, though, as she is pretty bad at learning foreign languages. She enjoys the work of Milan Kundera, Caitlin R Kiernan, Bret Easton Ellis, and Richard Linklater.
She lives and writes in Gig Harbor, Washington, with her husband, their cat son Tyrion Cattister, red Doberman dog son Obi-Dog Kenobi, rottie mix dog daughter Agent Scully, and naked Sphynx cat son Armpit McGee.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the recommended reading order for the Three Dark Crowns series?
I recommend reading the books in the order that they were published: Three Dark Crowns, One Dark Throne, Queens of Fennbirn (which consists of the novellas The Young Queens and the Oracle Queen), Two Dark Reigns and finally, Five Dark Fates.
But you do you. I read the Harry Potter books in the wrong order out of sheer defiance, so I know how that goes.
Are there any updates about the film/TV adaptations of Three Dark Crowns, Anna Dressed in Blood, On the I-5, etc?
I promise that if I have any new information that I am at liberty to share, I will share it immediately! And I will title the blog post something obvious like MOVIE NEWS or TV UPDATE! so you will be able to find it if you go looking through the posts. But let’s be real, anything official official will be released by the studio/production companies and will be searchable on the Google.
Any advice for new writers?
Yes. But all of it that I list here will be very broad because that’s what you want in an FAQ answer–the answer that will be of use to the most people.
READ! And READ! And then, READ SOME MORE! Never stop READING! I mean, why would you? Reading is great.
Before you sell your first book, write that book just for yourself. Hold it close. Cherish the time that it is just the two of you together. Let it be your passion, let it confound you, let yourself have fun. Write the book you want to write without thinking about what everyone else wants. Don’t chase trends. Don’t research the market. Write it. Love it. Make it as good as you possibly can. Research the business side of it after.
A good literary agent is worth their weight in gold. Research them carefully. Be professional. And for the love of Jeff, put as much effort as you can into making your query letter sparkle. Read the flap copy of your favorite books and think about why it made you want to pick that book up. Write you query letter to make that agent pick your book up.
Did I mention reading?
Finish! Whether it’s a novel or a poem or a short story, get to that ending. You can always revise it later. You can change the whole thing. But if you never get to the end, there’s nothing for anyone to work with. Learning to finish is an important skill, and one that many would-be greats never master.
Why did you end it that way? Why did you kill so-and-so/not let so-and-so be together/make so-and-so get up from the table before they finished their pancakes?
These are questions that you must ask the story. I’m not in charge of these things! And believe me, I was as mad about the abandoned pancakes as you were.
Where can I buy signed and/or personalized copies of your books?
I’m working on partnering with a local bookstore who will take your orders and ship them to you! Check back soon for details, I will post them on the main page.
Or, if I visit a city near you for an event, come on out and see me, I would love to meet you. Unless you’re just going to yell at me about the killings and the pancakes.
Kendare Blake
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Kendare Blake
Born Seoul, South Korea
Occupation Novelist
Language English
Nationality American
Education MFA in Creative Writing
Alma mater Ithaca College, Middlesex University
Genre Young adult fiction
Years active 2011-now
Notable works Three Dark Crowns
Website
kendareblake.com
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Kendare Blake is a contemporary author of young adult novels. Her works include Anna Dressed in Blood, Antigoddess and Three Dark Crowns.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Works
3.1 The Anna Duology
3.2 The Goddess Wars Series
4 Bibliography
4.1 The Anna Duology
4.2 Goddess Wars
4.3 Three Dark Crowns Series
4.4 In Every Generation Trilogy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
4.5 Standalone novels
4.6 Short fiction
4.6.1 Contributions to anthologies
4.6.2 Contributions to magazines
5 Other media
6 Awards and honors
6.1 Anna Dressed In Blood
6.2 Three Dark Crowns
7 References
8 External links
Early life
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Kendare Blake was raised in Cambridge, Minnesota by adoptive parents.[1]
She is an alumna of both Ithaca College (in New York)[2] and Middlesex University in London. It was at the latter where she received her Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing.[3]
Career
Her books stretch over a variety of genres, including horror, fantasy and contemporary fiction. Several of her works have been listed on the New York Times' Best Seller's List.[citation needed]
Her Anna Dressed in Blood duology and Goddess Wars trilogy were originally published in English by Tor Teen, while the Three Dark Crowns series was published by Harper Teen.
In November 2019 Blake announced via an Instagram post that Harper Teen would also be publishing her next three books. This was confirmed by a small piece in Publishers Weekly online on November 11.[4] A stand-alone horror novel titled All These Bodies is scheduled for 2021. It is described as the story of a teenage girl who survives an attack by a suspected serial killer, only to become the prime suspect. Also announced was the first in a two-part fantasy series to be released in 2022. On her Instagram account, Blake has referred to this work as Heromaker and it is expected to be a duology centering around a mystic order of warrior women.
In April 2021, Publishers Weekly announced Disney-Hyperion had obtained the rights to a new trilogy series by Blake, to be entitled In Every Generation. This series will is set in the same universe as the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and be set in a newly rebuilt Sunnydale, California, and features a new slayer, Buffy Summers' niece, as well as a werewolf and a demon who team up to save the world from evil.[citation needed]
Works
The Anna Duology
The Anna Duology is a two book series comprising the books Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares. The books follow Cas Lowood, a teenage ghost hunter whose father was killed by ghosts. Cas and his mother travel the world searching for spirits needing to be sent to the afterlife, and his latest assignment is Anna Dressed in Blood, a ghost with a reputation for ripping apart young men who venture into her home. Despite his life-long commitment to destroying spirits like Anna, Cas feels compelled to learn more about the real girl behind the spirit, and while working to solve her murder develops feelings for the ghost. In the first book, Anna eventually sacrifices herself to save Cas' life, while the second book focuses on Cas' journey to get her back and allow her to find a peaceful afterlife.
The Goddess Wars Series
The Goddess Wars is a series comprising three main books and two novellas. The first book, Antigoddess, focuses on the Greek goddess Athena and several other ancient immortals, all of whom are slowly dying in a variety of ways. A few of the old Gods have gone mad in their death throes and are hunting other former immortals in order to absorb some of their life force and prolong their existence. Looking for help, Athena and Hermes seek out a mortal girl named Cassandra who was once a powerful oracle, hoping to unlock her past memories that could help them. Book 2, Mortal Gods, Athena and Cassandra have formed an alliance and hope to battle Ares and his army of other dying Gods, which includes Aphrodite who killed the love of Cassandra's life. The two also seek out Achilles who they believe may be the key to winning the war. They are beaten back, however, and in the final book, Ungodly, Athena is stuck in the underworld while her allies try to find a way to heal the three Fates, who they discover are the source of the God's illnesses.
The two novellas in the series are both prequels with The Dogs of Athens focusing on Artemis as she searches for other immortals along with her pack of hungry dogs and When Gods and Vampires Roamed Miami focusing on a young man who mistakenly believes Athena to be a vampire and his attempts to get her to "turn" him.
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (July 2022)
The Anna Duology
Anna Dressed In Blood (2011; Tor Teen) – ISBN 978-0765328656
Girl of Nightmares (2012; Tor Teen) – ISBN 978-0765328663
Ominibus:
The Anna Dressed in Blood Duology (2018) – ISBN 978-1250301024
Goddess Wars
Antigoddess (2013; Tor) – ISBN 978-0765334435
Mortal Gods (2014; Tor) – ISBN 978-0765334442
Ungodly (2015; Tor) – ISBN 978-0765334459
Prequel novellas:
0.1. The Dogs of Athens (Prequel novella) (2015; Tor) – ISBN 978-0765384539
0.5. When Gods and Vampires Roamed Miami (Prequel novella) (2014; Tor) – ISBN 978-1466882478
Ominibus:
The Goddess War Trilogy (2018; Tor Teen) – ISBN 978-1250293466
Three Dark Crowns Series
Three Dark Crowns (2016; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062385437
One Dark Throne (2017; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062385468
Two Dark Reigns (2018; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062686145
Five Dark Fates (2019; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062686176
Prequel novellas:
0.1. The Oracle Queen (Prequel novella) (2018; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062748270 (e-book)
0.2. The Young Queens (Prequel novella) (2017; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062748263 (e-book)
Collection:
Queens of Fennbirn (Combining The Young Queens and The Oracle Queen) (2018; HarperTeen) – ISBN 978-0062748287
Ominibus:
Three Dark Crowns Series (2020) – ISBN 978-9123969289
In Every Generation Trilogy (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
In Every Generation (2022; Disney-Hyperion) – ISBN 978-1368075022
One Girl In All the World (Winter 2023) – ISBN 978-1368075077
Untitled Book 3
Standalone novels
Sleepwalk Society (2010; PRA Publishing) – ISBN 978-0982140710
All These Bodies (2021; Quill Tree Books) – ISBN 978-0062977168
Heromaker (announced)
Short fiction
Contributions to anthologies
Year Contribution Anthology Editor ISBN
2015 "On the I-5" (short fiction) Slasher Girls & Monster Boys (2015) ed. April Genevieve Tucholke ISBN 978-0803741737
"Burning Effigies" Violent Ends (2015)
2016 "Heart" (short fiction) The Truth Is Out There, X-Files universe (2016) ed. Jonathan Maberry ISBN 978-1631405266
2019 "She Rode a Horse of Fire" (short fiction) His Hideous Heart (2019) ed. Dahlia Adler ISBN 978-1250302779
Contributions to magazines
Year Contribution Magazine Editor ISBN
2009 "The Oak Prison" (short fiction) Expanded Horizons, Issue 13 ed. Dash
2010 "Twilight, Choking on Owl Feathers" (short fiction) Mirror Dance, Summer 2010 ed. Megan Arkenberg
Other media
In 2016, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer purchased the rights to turn Anna Dressed in Blood into a feature film through her production company Fickle Fish Films.[5] In May of that same year, it was announced that Maddie Hasson and Cameron Monaghan had been cast in the roles of Anna and Cass Lowood, respectively.[6] At that time, Trish Sie was named as the director, though later she was replaced by Amanda Row.[7]
In February 2017, Variety announced the Fox corporation had plans to turn the Three Dark Crowns series into a feature film through the 21 Laps Entertainment production company, which has also produced the Netflix series Stranger Things and the film Arrival. Shawn Levy and Dan Levine were announced as producers.[8]
In April 2019 it was also announced that Blake's short story On the I-5, which was featured in the Slasher Girls & Monster Boys anthology had been optioned for adaptation by Warner Brothers. As with Three Dark Crowns, production is being handled by 21 Laps Entertainment and Shawn Levy and Dan Levine will also produce. The story has been called "a female-empowered subversion of the serial-killer genre."[9]
Awards and honors
Anna Dressed In Blood
Cybils Award Nominee (2011)
Kirkus "Best Teen Books of the Year" (2011)[10]
Top 5 Novels of the Year - National Public Radio (2011)[11]
Missouri Gateway Readers Award Nominee (2014)[12]
Lincoln Award Nominee (2015)[13]
Three Dark Crowns
Missouri Gateway Reader's Award Nominee (2018) [14]
Lincoln Award Nominee (2019) [15]
Kendare Blake
USA flag
Kendare Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of several novels and short stories. Her work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She was born in July in Seoul, South Korea, but doesn’t speak a lick of Korean, as she was packed off at a very early age to her adoptive parents in the United States. That might be just an excuse, though, as she is pretty bad at learning foreign languages. She lives and writes in Gig Harbor, Washington, with her husband, their cat son Tyrion Cattister, red Doberman dog son Obi-Dog Kenobi, rottie mix dog daughter Agent Scully, and naked Sphynx cat son Armpit McGee.
Genres: Young Adult Fantasy
New Books
January 2023
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One Girl In All The World
(Buffy: The Next Generation, book 2)
Series
Anna
1. Anna Dressed in Blood (2011)
2. Girl of Nightmares (2012)
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Goddess War
0.1. The Dogs of Athens (2015)
0.5. When Gods and Vampires Roamed Miami (2014)
1. Antigoddess (2013)
2. Mortal Gods (2014)
3. Ungodly (2015)
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Three Dark Crowns
0.5. The Young Queens (2017)
1. Three Dark Crowns (2016)
2. One Dark Throne (2017)
2.5. The Oracle Queen (2018)
3. Two Dark Reigns (2018)
4. Five Dark Fates (2019)
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Novels
Sleep Walk Society (2011)
Violent Ends (2015) (with Derek Blyth, Steve Brezenoff, Delilah S Dawson, Margie Gelbwasser, Shaun David Hutchinson, Tom Leveen, Hannah Moskowitz, Beth Revis, Brendan Shusterman, Neal Shusterman, Cynthia Leitich Smith and Courtney Summers)
All These Bodies (2021)
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Series contributed to
Buffy: The Next Generation
1. In Every Generation (2022)
2. One Girl In All The World (2023)
Kendare Blake: “My only goal was to hang with these queens and their friends to their ends”
5 Questions With...
Kendare Blake
Aurora Dominguez
By: Aurora Dominguez
November 17, 2019
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[Note From Frolic: Our resident YA expert Aurora Dominguez got the opportunity to interview author Kendare Blake and ask her five(ish) questions. Kendare’s novel ‘Five Dark Fates‘ is out now!]
Five Dark Fates by Kendare Blake
Aurora: What was your inspiration behind Five Dark Fates?
Kendare: When I was writing Five Dark Fates, my only goal was to hang with these queens and their friends to their ends. Since the start of Three Dark Crowns, these young women have very much become the masters of their fates, and I was merely along for the ride. I wrote it so slowly sometimes, because I feared what would happen, and honestly I didn’t want it to be over!
What character do you most relate to and why?
I understand them all, from the naturalists to the poisoners, but I think I’m most similar to Queen Arsinoe. She and I both have difficulty finding our place–in friendships, on teams, within new environments–and we both only really soar when we’re backed into a corner. Also, she’s always hungry. And I feel that.
Why do you feel books with powerful and relatable characters are so popular and have such a voice right now?
I’ve always thought the best books were the ones with great characters. Perhaps not necessarily relatable, but understandable. With interesting drives and motivations, fascinating responses to things. I think young adults respond to powerful younger characters because their own lives are very much about breaking into new areas, finding their own voices, discovering their strengths and where their hearts lie.
Please describe the content of Five Dark Fates and what can readers expect from the read.
Expect it all to go down. The rebellion vs the crown, the dead queens vs the living. Expect sweet moments with adorable familiars and bittersweet goodbyes. It all ends here so…anything can happen.
What’s next for you in the book world?
Another fantasy series about an order of mystical warriors and a girl who wants to become one. But first, a standalone spree-murder book: think Interview with the Vampire meets In Cold Blood, inspired by the Clutter murders and the Starkweather killing spree of the 1950s, with a supernatural twist.
Who is your favorite writer right now and why?
This question is impossible to answer. I admire and adore too many writers. Right now I’m reading Olive Kitteridge, which is my first reading of Elizabeth Strout, and it’s excellent. I also really loved Sadie by Courtney Summers this year. And I’m so excited for Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff. Very excited to read one that might not be on your radar yet: currently titled Curses by Lish McBride, who wrote the absolutely bloody and hilarious Hold Me Closer, Necromancer.
Two Dark Reigns – Interview with Kendare Blake!
October 19, 2018Bec
Welcome to an exclusive little Q&A with Kendare Blake, author of Two Dark Reigns!
1. Congratulations on the third book in the Three Dark Crowns series! Can you tell us a little about Two Dark Reigns?
Sure! Two Dark Reigns is the story of what happens after the Ascension Year is over. Someone has the crown, but the island is not finished with our queens just yet. Everyone still has a part to play. Expect the past to return in insidious forms, a rebellion to rise, and of course, unexpected alliances and betrayals.
2. I love that your book series focuses on a matriarchy. What was the inspiration behind that and the core themes of Two Dark Reigns?
Well, the entire series was inspired by the behaviour of queen bees, so having the island be a matriarchy seemed like the natural choice since that’s the way it works in a hive. I love being able to work with so many varied women about the constraints of patriarchal gender roles.
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3. After your success with this bestseller series, do you feel you’ve grown as a writer? What changes do you see within your own writing?
I’ve definitely come to know the world of Fennbirn very intimately! I have a thousand years of queen history just rolling through my head. Honestly, I’m a bit sad to be leaving it behind. I’m going to miss these queens. I wish I could say that the writing overall has improved, and in the final drafts I think it has, but unfortunately my first drafts are all still abysmal. Really, really wretched. It never used to be this way! The first draft of Anna Dressed in Blood was pristine by comparison So maybe this means I’m getting worse. 🙂
4. What are some of the authors that have inspired you, both as an author and a reader?
It’s a real perk of the job that I get to meet so many authors. We chat, we commiserate, and I find them all really inspiring in one way or another. Sometimes they blow me away with their productivity. Sometimes with their dogged persistence and work ethic. Often they’re absolutely brilliant. Lauren Oliver, is one of those writers whose brain is always firing on all cylinders. She functions better with the flu than I do after a spa weekend. It’s astounding. And Stephanie Garber’s process is very inspiring, plus she’s a fantastic human being and an amazing writer. Of writers whom I have not met, I’ll say Caitlin R Kiernan, and Joe Hill, and I’ll cut it off there. I’ve been influenced by so many.
5. If you could offer your teen self one piece of advice, what would you say?
Practice driving more. Seriously. It’s an important skill and I’m so bad at it. My life would be much easier sometimes, if I’m more confident behind the wheel.
twodarkreigns
Thank you Kendare for the lovely interview!
Thank you as well to Pan Macmillan Australia for the opportunity to interview Kendare Blake, too!
You can buy Two Dark Reigns here!
Interview: Talking ‘In Every Generation’ With Author Kendare Blake [EXCLUSIVE]
INTERVIEWSInterview: Talking 'In Every Generation' With Author Kendare Blake
Sarah
By
Sarah
January 5, 2022
Readers are taken back to Sunnydale and the Buffyverse for a new Slayer-witch journey in Kendare Blake’s In Every Generation. Part of an upcoming trilogy, the book follows the new vampire, Slayer Frankie Rosenberg’s journey. Frankie and her group of Scoobies go against an unknown evil while trying to find answers about what happened to all the other Slayers. Fans will meet new characters and even some fan favorites returning from the television series.
This world is brought to life by New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake (Antigoddess), whose work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She lives and writes in Gig Harbor, Washington, with her husband, their cat son Tyrion Cattister, red Doberman dog son Obi-Dog Kenobi, rottie mix dog daughter Agent Scully, and naked Sphynx cat son Armpit McGee.
Recently, we had the opportunity to interview Blake. She talks about writing for the various characters, a favorite moment in the book, the writing process, upcoming projects, and more.
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Note: Some spoilers beyond this point.
Nerds & Beyond: I have to begin by saying I love the names of your dog and cat children.
Kendare Blake: Thank you! This pleases me greatly, as they’re the center of my universe.
Nerds & Beyond: Congratulations on In Every Generation! It honestly was hard to put down, and it brought me back to the original feel of when I first found the Buffy the Vampire Salyer series.
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Kendare Blake: Thank you AGAIN! That’s precisely what I was aiming for: that classic Buffy feel. That’s what I wanted more of: the quips, the camaraderie, the exasperated Watchers. The bitchin’ fight scenes.
Nerds & Beyond: How did the concept of bringing the Buffyverse back in a trilogy come about?
Kendare Blake: I don’t really know. By the time the publisher came to me, they had the premise and the three-book structure, and it had all been signed off on by the Buffy creative team. Very enthusiastically, I was told.
Nerds & Beyond: How much liberty did you have with writing or mentioning the original characters like Willow, Oz, etc.?
Kendare Blake: I had pretty much free rein. Of course, I never really tugged on that rein. Like, I never tried to kill Oz just to see if they’d allow it. Why would I? I wanted more of those classic characters, and I wanted them to be as true to themselves as I could manage. It was nerve-wracking to start out, honestly. But after those first scenes, it was the best time. I really miss them. Let’s see them on screen again! Come on; everyone’s doing it!
Nerds & Beyond: When writing for characters so many people are familiar with, was there anyone in particular that you were nervous about writing for?
Kendare Blake: Willow. I feel like she’s the one who, as a fandom, we are the most protective of. And much like Buffy, Willow contains multitudes. She’s awkward yet bold. Easily wigged out yet such a warrior. Even her tones and mannerisms are varied, so it was a challenge to pin her down and make her feel definitively Willow because Willow is so many things. Take, for example, her famous “resolve face.” It’s adorable and a little babyish, but at the same time, you don’t doubt her resolve.
Aside from Willow, though, I do have to mention how completely intimidated I would have been writing Buffy. I mean, she’s Buffy. I didn’t want her to be missing and presumed dead any more than anyone else, but I was relieved to not have to tackle her from page one.
Nerds & Beyond: And speaking of characters, readers are introduced to new characters with big shoes to fill. Where did the inspiration for them come from?
Kendare Blake: Frankie being Willow’s witchy daughter was in the pitch. So was Jake being Oz’s nephew/cousin and Hailey being Vi’s little sister. Sigmund, who joins the group as their necessary scholarly component (since Spike is definitely not filling that role), was noted to be a Sage demon, but I had to figure out what that was.
For the most part, I turned them loose and let them figure things out. There were a few drafts where I wrote extra scenes, shoving them together, like screen tests for chemistry. I’d put Frankie and Sigmund in a room to see what happened. I’d let Hailey and Jake or Jake and Sigmund be on their own for a minute and get a read on how they played off of each other. Those scenes usually didn’t stay, but I love that kind of character work. It’s fun.
Nerds & Beyond: I love the character of Frankie and am wondering which Hogwarts house would she be in?
Kendare Blake: Frankie would be…a Ravenpuff? No, she would be a Huffle-dor. Frankie is very caring, and she keeps an eye out for people’s feelings. She’s very loyal, even when she’s being bristly with Jake. And she’s brave. She is not, however, the most natural slayer. She fights like Sailor Moon — falling on her face, spinning out of the way while wailing — and while that will get better with practice, I don’t think it’s ever going to go away entirely.
Nerds & Beyond: Do you have a favorite moment in the book when you were writing?
Kendare Blake: The times when Frankie can land a good quip mid-battle. I love those moments that pop up where she’s like, holy crap; I am a Slayer. And then she promptly almost dies. Also, there’s a scene with Spike early on where Willow does magic on him for practice, and he freaks out. I love Spike when he’s a big baby. A Big Bad Baby.
Nerds & Beyond: I know this can be a hard question, but who is your favorite character from Buffy?
Kendare Blake: This used to be a harder question, but lately, I’ve come to realize that my favorite character is Buffy. She’s the one. That scene in season 7 with Spike in the abandoned house right before she goes to beat the crap out of Caleb? I could give her that speech. Hang on, that sounds creepy.
Nerds & Beyond: Do you have a favorite episode of Buffy?
Kendare Blake: No. I can’t pick a favorite, favorite. I can point to the same standouts that most fans can: “Hush,” “Once More With Feeling,” “Becoming Parts One and Two,” “Band Candy,” but I love so many moments from that series. The scene from season 6 where Buffy gets stuck in the time loop trying to sell that mummy hand? Sarah Michelle Gellar slapping that mummy hand and saying, “It’s not dead, it’s just playing dead! Little Scamp!” is on repeat in my head right now.
Nerds & Beyond: Does the writing process or style differ from an already created world or one you are creating from scratch?
Kendare Blake: Of course! Most of the work is done for me; now, I just have to remain faithful to the rules. But there are still opportunities to stretch the mythology, which is both fun and intimidating. And it’s kind of a warm fuzzy knowing I’m working in a world that so many people already love. And it’s absolutely paralyzing knowing some of those people are going to hate what I’m doing to it.
Mostly though, writing in Sunnydale was a joy. Utter, gleeful joy. I have never had more fun with work. Every time I got edit notes, I was like, YES, MORE TIME IN SUNNYDALE. Even changing things, reworking scenes, it was still basically me at my desk screaming, WHEEE like that little pig in that old Geico commercial.
Nerds & Beyond: What do you hope readers will take away after reading In Every Generation?
Kendare Blake: Classic Buffy feelings! Nostalgia! I hope it makes them remember all the things they loved about the show. I hope it feels kind of like watching a lost episode. And I hope it makes them want to rewatch the series for the hundredth time.
Nerds & Beyond: What’s next for you? Any upcoming projects you can mention?
Kendare Blake: Well, there’s more Buffy coming in 2023 with the next book in the trilogy. In book two, our Scoobies are a cemented, close-knit team, so I have a lot of fun with relationships in that one, evolving them and throwing them curveballs.
And in Fall 2023, my next fantasy (book) comes out, which currently has no title but is about a girl training to join an order of mystical women warriors. Until it has a title, I’m calling it AMAZON JEDIS, which should give you the basic vibe.
Nerds & Beyond: So, for my last question, here at Nerds & Beyond, obviously, we love embracing our nerdy side. What are some things that you like to nerd out to?
Kendare Blake: Some things I nerd out to: 80’s music, Final Fantasy, Buffy (obviously), Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the movies of Val Kilmer, Gargoyles, Game of Thrones, Stephen King, and Rick and Morty.
Thank you, Kendare Blake for taking the time to answer our questions. You can get your copy of In Every Generation here!
Meet Kendare Blake, Author of ALL THESE BODIES
LOUIS GALVEZ GUEST CONTRIBUTOR / OCTOBER 16, 2021 / NO COMMENTS
Kendare Blake, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series, is back. Her latest book, All These Bodies, bares its fangs as it lunges for the throat. With a tagline like, “True Crime with A Vampire,” what else could we expect? Sitting down on opposite coasts, Kendare and I turned to Zoom to chat about murder, friendship, horror, writing, and genre hopping.
I hope you enjoy her insights as much as we did here at Dead Darlings.
I found it interesting that you based this paranormal serial murder story on real life events. How did this idea germinate?
It took a really long time. How it showed up, I can hardly remember. It was in my head as far back as 2014, 2015, and it didn’t know what it really wanted to be. There were some inklings about spree killing, teenagers, the Caril Ann Fugate (the youngest female in U.S. history tried for first-degree murder), the spree killer Charlie Starkweather, but it was just a big mishmash of disparate ideas. I put it aside and worked on other books two or three times. And then finally, in 2019, everything started to come together. I got a feel for the characters, the narrator revealed himself, as did Marie Catherine Hale, the girl who, covered in the victims’ blood, is found in a farmhouse full of dead people. I had a vampire and incorporated the Clutter family murders into a kind-of riff on In Cold Blood. So once the main elements of the story made themselves known, then it was just a matter of putting it together.
The story starts at the tail end of a murder spree. One of the things I really liked was that you included a map of the murder sites and placed it before page 1. I thought that was a clever way of giving us backstory.
That was a later addition. Initially I had my narrator lay the timeline down, introduce the victims, explain where and when they were killed, and it was such an info dump. I kept wrestling with, ‘How do I get this information out there without having this extremely boring, hard-to-follow paragraph where I just lay down the murder trail?’ That’s when I thought, ‘Why don’t I just do an info graphic? I mean it’s going to be a published book, and everybody loves a map’. So, my editor and I talked through how to make it visually interesting and we had the idea to stylize it, as if it had been an info graphic that had run in a newspaper of the day. I think it worked.
I agree. Since you mentioned In Cold Blood and its influence on your book, did you always have the timeline set in 1958 or did you ever play with other years that it could have happened?
It’s based on two different crimes. It’s based on the Clutter Murders in Holcomb Kansas in 1959, but it’s mostly based on the Starkweather/Fugate murders, which occurred in January of 1958. Since they both happened in the late 1950s, and they both took place in small, midwestern towns, for the most part, it just seemed that the natural time and place to set the story was in a small midwestern town in 1958.
At its heart, your story is about two friendships: Michael’s friendship with Percy, and the friendship of Michael and Marie. How did you approach those friendships? Did you know what you wanted out of them before you started, or did you let them reveal themselves?
When it comes to characters, I tend to let that happen naturally. One of my greatest joys as a writer is getting to know the characters independently and then shoving them in a room together to see what happens. I did that with my Three Dark Crown series, which is about triplet sisters who are magical queens, and they have to kill each other once their sixteenth birthday arrives. I was just so excited to create three powerful young women and just be like, ‘Go kill,’ and see how they handled it.
It was much the same with Michael and Marie. I knew, she was the crux of the story. She has all the answers locked inside. Michael is the son of the local sheriff, an aspiring journalist, and the only person Marie will talk to about what happened. It’s his job to try to find the truth so he can give the families of the victims some peace. I knew she wasn’t going to want to give that information up and that she was going to be very adamant about telling her own story. And I was just excited to see how Michael would do. Would she string him along? How would they end up? I didn’t know if they’d have a grudging respect for each other, or if they’d be very fond of each other, so writing that was a lot of fun.
When it came to Percy, Michael’s best friend since their sandbox years, that was just a nice surprise. Percy Valentine became one of my favorite characters. He’s just a good, goofy kid. He’s the best friend that I would have wanted growing up. He’s completely loyal. He’s completely supportive. And the two of them together was just a nice safe space for Michael to have outside of his time questioning Marie.
The character that depicted the negative side of humanity the most was Mr. Pilson. He’s the real antagonist of the story. Was he based on anybody, whether fictional or real?
Well, yes and no. Some of the things he says are quotes taken from the trial of Caril Ann Fugate. Caril Ann Fugate was Charlie Starkweather’s accomplice, or at least she was convicted as his accomplice, and she was only 14. There’s a very famous quote by the prosecuting attorney in that case saying something like, “She’s only 14, but even 14-year-old girls have to know that they can’t go on 11 victim killing sprees.” I used that quote in the book, so certain aspects of Mr. Pilson were definitely inspired by real life. In Caril Ann Fugate’s trial, she got railroaded. I’ve done a lot of research into the case, including how she was condemned by the media and journalists. It was very important to me to think about Marie being treated this way and why it became important for her to tell her own story.
Also, it’s easy to villainize Pilson as the antagonist because he comes across as full of fire and brimstone, selfishness, and self-aggrandizement, but he does have a point. If you were in his position, advocating for justice for the victims, and you had a suspect in custody and this was the story she was trying to spin, you’d be just as angry and frustrated as he was. It was a joy to write Pilson, it’s always fun to write the jerk. But after the story was over, I saw his point, I saw his perspective. And it’s important to be able to see that if you want to have a good villain.
The crux of the story is Michael’s interview with Marie. At first, she leads him on, telling him what she thinks he wants to hear. As they go along, they form a friendship. In the end she tells him, maybe not the whole truth, but she tells him a whole lot more of the truth than she originally intended to. And the truth she tells includes the paranormal aspect of the story.
Through the story you keep the vampire an arm’s length away from the reader. Most vampire stories follow the vampire. In this one the vampire hovers around the edges. Why did you choose to go in that direction?
Because the heart of the story is about belief, I wanted to give the readers enough space to make up their own minds. Some readers have said that there is clearly a vampire, and some readers have said, ‘Well, no. Marie was clearly traumatized, and this is the way that she’s chosen to disassociate.’ And what a reader thinks actually happened in the story tells me more about who that reader is as a person, which I always find fascinating. I wanted to keep the vampire off page because I tend to think that frightening things are more frightening when you don’t get a good look at them. They don’t have as much power when you can’t break them down and understand them. Also, if I showed too much of the vampire it would have slung the narrative in a direction I wasn’t interested in taking. I wanted to present those questions, I didn’t necessarily want to answer them, which is also why the ending was purposely left ambiguous.
Marie remains a likable and compelling character even though some of the things she reveals about herself should make her unlikable. She’s someone whom I think readers could identify with even though she got involved in some very dark stuff. Was that your intention?
It was. Because of the nature of the crimes Marie was accused of, and the unbelievable explanation she tries to pass off, I knew she was being set up not to be liked. This is the kind of set up where a reader might say, ‘Aah, she’s a liar, she’s a little thief, a little killer.’ Seeing Marie through Michael’s eyes, you get to know her as Michael does. The character of Michael was very much inspired by Truman Capote himself and the relationship that Truman Capote developed with Perry Smith, one of the killers of the Clutter Family in Holcomb Kansas. Capote spent a lot of time interviewing the killers in jail. And some say he developed an inappropriately close relationship with them. Their ultimate execution and the role he played in their defense fundamentally changed Capote as a person. So, I wanted that to happen to Michael. I wanted him to go in with all this journalistic intent, very un-biased, search for the truth, be very objective. But, except for maybe complete psychopaths, you can’t spend that much time with someone and not come to see them as a person. Once you see them as a person you’ll empathize with that commonality.
Even though your ending is ambiguous, you give the audience enough to be able to decide if this is a paranormal story or not. It has a bit of a ‘Lady and the Tiger’ ending. Do you see yourself revisiting these characters in the future, or do you think this was a one-off story?
I definitely think this is a one-off story. Someone at my agency floated the idea of trying to develop it into a series of screenplays for TV. While it is always tempting, and it’s always exciting that people would want more of the story, but if I went back into it, I would have to answer a lot of the questions that I intentionally left unanswered. So, I thought and I thought and I thought about it, trying to find a work around, but nothing worked and it all felt like it would be a rip off. No, I think this is it. I think this story is told. Even though the open ending is going to drive some people nuts, I like to think of the open ending as true to life in that in all crime, we are left to make up our own minds. We’ll never know for sure if someone is guilty or innocence unless we have video footage. Even then, a lot of the truth of what happened is encapsulated in the minds of the perpetrator and the victim. Even after a conviction by a jury of our peers, we’re left to feel better about the situation, but the truth of the situation is still hazy.
I agree. You wrote the Three Dark Crowns books as a series. Now you’ve written a stand-alone. Did you approach these differently knowing one was a series and that one was going to be a stand-alone?
I kind of fly by the seat of my pants when it come to that. My first novel was a duology, two books. When I wrote the first book, Anna Dressed in Blood, I didn’t know there was going to be a second book. When we sold it, my editor asked for a second book and I said, ‘Well, sure, this could probably happen.’ So, I wrote that. When I sold my next series, which was based on the Trojan war, I knew it was a trilogy. I had that all mapped out in advance. And then with the Three Dark Crowns, I sold it as another duet, and when I reached the end of the duet, I realized there was more story to tell so I wrote two more books and turned it into a quartet. And that’s when I realized that I had a two-book series, a three-book series, and a four-book series. So, I could write a five-book series or I could go back and write one book. I thought that the smarter move was going back to one.
In reading your author’s note, it sounds like you already have another book in the works that has something to do with history.
It’s a fantasy series, the first book of that releases in 2023. It’s set in a fictional ancient world. Greek inspired, ancient Alexandrian, Macedonian, kind of thing. I had to do some research into that time period. But it’s not terribly faithful. Which is what I enjoy about an ancient world inspired fantasy setting.
A lot of authors can get pigeon-holed into writing a specific kind of story and it seems like you’ve had the luxury of being able to explore different time periods, different worlds.
Yeah, Different genres. I’ve gone from horror to urban fantasy, mythology to high fantasy/dark fantasy, and then back to speculative historical true crime. I think that’s a luxury that young adult authors in particular get to take advantages of. If an adult fiction author comes out of the gate with a hit, their publishers will be like, ‘More of that, please.’ And that makes a lot of sense for them because you’re trying build an audience. And we as readers want to know what we’re getting into when we see a particular authors name. When I pick up Stephen King, I know a little something dark is going to be in there, and if it’s not, I’m going to be perplexed by the end of it. Your Dean Koontz books, your Nicholas Sparks books, they’d better have some of what we expect. If Nicholas Sparks suddenly wrote a speculative slash thriller, that would be really confusing to his fans.
But, for whatever reason, young adult authors are allowed to play in whatever sandbox we like. I don’t know why that is. I’ve talked about it a lot with my young adult writer friends because we all tend to bounce around. And It’s nice. But I do wonder if it effects our ability to build an audience. But still, bouncing around is what I want to do. I don’t think I could only write ‘more of the same.’ I have to keep writing whatever comes to me.
Kendare Blake is the author of several novels and short stories. Her work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She was born in July (for those of you doing book reports) in Seoul, South Korea, but doesn’t speak a lick of Korean, as she was packed off at a very early age to her adoptive parents in the United States. That might be just an excuse, though, as she is pretty bad at learning foreign languages. She lives and writes in Gig Harbor, Washington, with her husband, their cat son Tyrion Cattister, red Doberman dog son Obi-Dog Kenobi, rottie mix dog daughter Agent Scully, and naked Sphynx cat son Armpit McGee.
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First Draft Episode #324: Kendare Blake
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
Kendare Blake, New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series, Anna Dressed in Blood, and more, talks about her new historical thriller, All These Bodies, and her upcoming YA novel set in the universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, In Every Generation.
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Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Kendare Blake, New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crown series, Anna Dressed in Blood and more. She's here to talk about her new historical thriller, All These Bodies and her upcoming YA series set in the universe of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, In Every Generation.
I love talking to Kendare. I love what she had to say about the risks that authors take when they move on from a popular series, and how to balance reader expectations with our own creative impulses. She talks about the stories that young women are allowed to tell if they want to be believed, and how she played with ambiguity and truth in a true crime narrative.
And also you'll have to listen to hear our kind of existential cone about whether we're writing in Scrivener or Scrivener is writing us. Mm, um...unclear.
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Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Kendare Blake.
Sarah Enni: All right. So hi, Kendare. How are you doing today?
Kendare Blake: I am doing pretty well. Thank you for having me.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I'm so excited to chat again. This is not the first time we're talking we've actually had you on the show for a traditional First Draft interview. You were one of the very first people that I interviewed on my initial road trip so I'll link to that in the show notes. And we had a live event when my debut book came out in 2019 that you were kind enough to come out and talk to me and Somaiya Daud, which was awesome.
(Hear Kendare’s previous episode of First Draft here, and watch the Tell Me Everything University Bookstore (Seattle, WA) event featuring Sarah Enni, Kendare, and Somaiya Daud, author of YA sci-fi book Mirage and Court of Lions.)
But then today we get to talk about what you've been up to since then, which is a lot! I'm really excited about it. So we're not gonna cover the traditional bio stuff cause we did that already, but I do want to take us back a little bit to when you were wrapping up the Three Dark Crown series.
Which I didn't realize, I was listening to an interview with you this morning, and I hadn't realized that it had started as two books and then expanded to four. So you've been in that world for quite some time. So what was it like to wrap up that series?
Kendare Blake: I was in the world for quite a while. The idea came to me in 2013 in a book event, it was actually before another trilogy was just about to come out. Antigoddess was just about to come out and that's when I had the idea for Three Dark Crowns. So it had to wait for a while for the rest of that trilogy to come out so we could sell it. So, yeah, from 2013, till 2019, I was just all murdering queens, 24/7.
Sarah Enni: You were in the same world and talking about the same sort of intense murder et cetera, as you say, um matricide?
[Both laugh]
Kendare Blake: Matricide, sororicide, there was just a lot of 'cides going on in that series. And I feel really lucky that the first books did well enough that when the publisher asked me, "Well, what do you want to do next?" I was able to say, "How about a little more of this?" Because I thought I'd put the characters to rest, but I kept wondering what they were up to and maybe what happened. And I wondered if there was just a little bit more to tell.
And there was a lot! There were two books worth and actually a third kind of pseudo book where, there's a subplot in the second two books about a blue queen from the past and her sister. And I actually wrote like 50,000 words of that and then just cut it all. It was originally gonna be integrated into book three and then I just cut most of it and just kept the very pertinent parts.
So I actually ended up writing two more books, plus a bonus book, plus we got to do the novellas. Which consisted of the two short novellas, The Young Queens, about the queens when they were kids, and The Oracle Queen about the famous last oracle queen of Fennbirn. I got to just whirl around in that island for a few extra years, just bonus years, I like to think of them.
Sarah Enni: And that series was a really big deal. It was really kind of a breakout series that people got very attached to. I'm just curious what it feels like for you to step away and try something new. How do you feel about whether readers are gonna follow you here? Or do you miss that place you've been in for so long?
Kendare Blake: I feel lucky in that I've had that experience before. Anna Dressed in Blood was what brought me onto the scene, and Anna had a lot of really fervent followers. And then I switched and did like Greek mythology and that series did not do very well. And then I switched to Three Dark Crowns, again, which was dark fantasy.
And there was a lot of overlap between readership. People will find me from one thing or another, and then they'll find me through Anna and they'll follow the Three Dark Crowns, or vice versa, they'll backtrack to Anna. It is scary because every time it's like, "Well, okay, I've got to promote this new book. I've got to chase down those readers again and hope they're interested in what I have this time." And you're never sure. You're never sure what people are in the mood for.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about the brand new thing that you have coming out, which is All These Bodies. It is a standalone. So it's a whole other kind of thing for you to pitch.
Kendare Blake: Yes, and it's a big departure also from anything that I've ever written. I try to say that there are similarities between it and Anna Dressed in Blood so if you liked that, maybe you'll like this. But really it's its own thing. It's historical, it's set in the 1950's, so that's something I've never done before. It's more literary.
It is very scary because just because you liked Three Dark Crowns does not in any way guarantee that you will like All These Bodies because they are very different. And there's a lot of expectations that build up, and you want to have that sense. You want to develop that kind of relationship with readers, that when they pick up a book of yours, they kind of trust what they're getting, or they have a sense of what they're in for.
And, I don't know, I think I've been very bad about that because I'm the kind of writer who is just like, "Ah...no. I want to do this now. And isn't it weird?" And they're like, "No, please don't do that. Please do more of this other thing." And I'm like, "Well, I can't. I can't right now."
Sarah Enni: That's a good point you're making that, as writers, we have to find the way to walk that tight rope. A publisher and the audience would always want more of the same because, of course they do, that just makes sense. But as authors, we have to find projects that really speak to us and that we can spend that much time in and develop. And sometimes those things overlap and sometimes they don't. So it's hard.
A lot of this conversation is echoing a conversation I just had with Stephanie Perkins (New York Times bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss and the horror novel There’s Someone Inside Your House (watch the Netflix film adaptation Oct. 6!) talks about her newest scary book, The Woods Are Always Watching) whose new book, The Woods Are Always Watching, is a horror novel.
We had the similar conversation about it being the grizzly, murdery, book of her heart and she just had to go with it. So I think this is probably gonna be a similar conversation.
Kendare Blake: And she went from like the sweetest, most lovely rom-coms to the slashiest, bloodiest, you know? That's like a hard pivot. But she does them both so well, so screw it. Let's do it!
Sarah Enni: So let's talk about All These Bodies. I have so many questions about this book. I would love for you to give us the formal pitch for All These Bodies first, please.
Kendare Blake: Yes. I'm impressed with myself because for the first time I have one!
[Both laugh].
Kendare Blake: So, All These Bodies is the story of two teenagers who get caught up in this mysterious murder spree that rips through the 1950's Midwest. Marie Catherine Hale is a 15 year-old girl who is discovered covered in blood in the middle of a farmhouse where the entire family, except for the little baby, has just been slaughtered. And Michael Jensen is the 17 year-old son of the local sheriff. He's an aspiring journalist. And he is the only one that she will tell her story to.
So this murder spree has been terrorizing everybody. It's captivated people through newspaper headlines, in the time before cell phones, in the time really before TV journalism, she's been splashed across the headlines. And now she chooses him to find the truth. And the story that she tells is totally unbelievable.
The hook of the murders is that despite the bodies being completely drained of blood, all of the crime scenes are suspiciously clean, like hardly a drop. So where did all this blood go? So I like to think of it as true crime with a vampire.
Sarah Enni: Which feels appropriate. So, as you say, All These Bodies is really different from your other works. And in your author's note you said, "There are no spells, there's no opinionated animals. And since the bloodless murders in this book were inspired by the murders of real people, I try to treat them with seriousness and weight, even as I imparted some possibly supernatural twists."
So I want to hear about both what the inspiration was, what this true crime is that you're kind of pulling from, and how you developed in thinking about treating this material? And how you were gonna spin a narrative while respecting the actual events.
Kendare Blake: It was actually inspired by two true crimes that both occurred in 1958 and 1959, which is when the book is also set. I didn't realize that those were just bad years to be alive in the Midwest. The first of the true crimes, was the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, which most of us are familiar with because of Truman Capote and In Cold Blood. He profiled the heck out of those murderers.
And I was fascinated, not so much by the murders themselves in that case, but by Capone himself. And the way that he basically invented the true crime novel and went to that town, which was a really small Kansas town that had been blown apart by this thing that they never imagined could happen to them, and how he just cracked those towns people open and got them to trust him.
Maybe they had poor judgment in trusting him. But I thought that the way that he profiled them was very respectful and very intriguing. And the other crime, the one that fascinated me the most, was in 1959, in January. Two teenagers went on a massive killing spree, an 11 victim killing spree. Charlie Starkweather, 19 years-old, and his girlfriend, 14 year-old Caril Ann Fugate, raced across the country and just shot people, essentially.
He was convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. I think she was released after she served like 16 years of a life sentence. But I was very fascinated by Caril, in particular. She was just so young when this happened, she was like a child. And she always said that she was Charlie's hostage, but nobody seemed to believe her. Nobody seemed to be interested in the story she was telling.
It was more like the story that was being written around her, by the headlines, by the media, by even Charlie himself. He would say things like, "Oh, we had sex all the time. And sex, sex, sex. And we had twice sex on Sundays." I think that was one of his favorite quotes, that they had sex every day and twice on Sundays.
If you had asked Caril, she would have said that she was a virgin and they never did anything else than like French kiss. And she had no idea what he was talking about. She was 14! She didn't even understand what that meant. But once that kind of became known, in 1958, that was not a good thing for a girl to be promiscuous. So I was always fascinated by Caril and public perception of her. And that's what fueled some of it.
Sarah Enni: I did a little reading about this before we talked today and it was really wild. He, after being convicted to die, was allowed to be the main witness against her, which is bananas. And she maintained always that, I mean, first of all, many of the victims are her family and she says that he threatened... Anyway, it's a really grizzly, sad story.
And the most recent article I saw was she was petitioning to be pardoned because she maintains, still, that she was held hostage. Anyway, it is a fascinating story. It's actually been adapted for a lot. Like Bruce Springsteen made a song about these murders, there was TV shows and movies about it. How did you first hear about it?
Kendare Blake: I think my first exposure to it was the old TV movie from the nineties. I watched it with my mom, tucked up under the blankets, when I was a kid. Starring Fairuza Balk. Fairuza Balk played Caril Ann and Tim Roth played Charlie. And it was called Murder in the Heartland. It was made for TV, so it was kind of toned down. But even then, it was just such a fascinating story. And I couldn't believe that it was true.
And then later as an older teenager, I came across Natural Born Killers, that was partially inspired by the story as well. But like you, I just found it so wild that he was allowed to be the star witness. I mean, I know my ex-boyfriends are just very reliable when it comes to my characterization [laughs].
Sarah Enni: Right, you had a blog post where you sort of talked about how this idea had been tapping you on the shoulder for many years, but I'd love to just hear about how it developed.
Kendare Blake: The idea showed up before the idea for Three Dark Crowns. So All These Bodies has been around for even longer, but it was so not ready. It was just half baked and like this little monstrosity with like one eyeball and just like, runny infected skin. And he's just like, "Hey, do you want to work on me?" I'm like, "No, I do not. Thank you. I don't even know what you are and you need to just wait your turn. I've got these three queens to deal with." And it was like, "Okay, fine."
And then when One Dark Throne was finished and we had to decide what to do next, it came back and it was like, "Hey, remember me? I've got two eyes now. And I might be inspired by these particular killings. How do you think of that?" And I was like, "Well, that's a little bit better, but it's still too strange and go away. I want to keep working with these queens."
And then when Three Dark Crowns was ending and we were deciding what to do next, it just showed up. And it's like, "Now I have a vampire." I was like, "God, you're just not gonna stop are you? You're just gonna get weirder and weirder until I stop you right now and just do it." So before it could roll out with something even more odd, I just decided, "Let's see what this is about." And I started to work on it.
And I think of it as my goodwill book. You know, when you finish a book series and you're trying to sell something else to your publisher, you as a writer know, you kinda got to entice them. And you gotta be like, "Then this is also something that you would want to publish. Right?" And All These Bodies was so weird that I think that I got them like right when they were still on the goodwill of Three Dark Crowns.
Like, "Yeah. Three Dark Crowns did really well! Remember that? And I'm just gonna slide this right in behind it real sneaky-like, and you're not gonna worry that it's weird." Just a little bit of opportunity to take a risk that maybe I would not have been allowed to take otherwise. And I recognize that and I really appreciate it.
Sarah Enni: I love that it sort of developed over time and it was like stewing in the back of your brain getting weirder and weirder. But when you set out to start writing it, was it immediately apparent that you needed to go this more serious literary route? How did you kind of develop that?
Kendare Blake: It was. All These Bodies was the first time that I was ever trying to write a mystery. I'd never done that before. Normally my books take me on a ride. I have the concept, I have an initial conflict. And then I just kind of chuck everybody in a room together, me included, and see what happens. I'm very much a pantser in that way.
With All These Bodies, I knew where the story was going. And I knew exactly what had happened at each of these murders. Like I was at the murder scenes of every one of these people. And it's kind of strange because, the murders are in the past, we pick up the book right as the final murders have just occurred. And it's less like a, "Who's doing this?" Than a, "What actually happened?"
So that was strange. I wasn't sure exactly how I was supposed to parse out interesting details to keep hooking the readers, and hooking them along without revealing too much, or revealing it at the wrong time. So that was a challenge.
I knew immediately, though, that it was going to be a different kind of book. It wasn't going to be smart-assy, which I love smart-assy, I did miss that a little bit. There weren't gonna be any talking animals, which I do always miss my talking animals. But Michael was a great narrator. I was really lucky to get him.
He's an aspiring journalist and honestly, I think he's gonna be a good one. He was just so earnest and he was very involved and committed to telling the story correctly from the start. And he kind of pulled me into that as well.
So just having his voice there to ground everything, was really useful in the writing, which sounds weird because it's like, "He's not real Kendare, you made him up." But no! He is real!
Sarah Enni: He's real to you!
Kendare Blake: Yes! All of my characters have to have their own unique voices. And he'd been in my head for quite some time before I actually started writing his words down. So it wasn't something I needed to figure out on the page he was already there.
Sarah Enni: And you're saying, the first time you're writing a mystery, what comes to mind is that you have been a pantser the whole way. And mysteries are a real hard thing to pants.
Kendare Blake: You have to know everything that happens and you have to lay out the clues to lead people down the same path that you've already been down. So that was strange. I mean, luckily the book still found ways to surprise me. There are still things that happen, over the course of the book, that I didn't know were going to happen. But I knew the true story behind the murders the whole time. That's the difference.
Sarah Enni: Oh, okay.
Kendare Blake: So it was just like, "Yeah, okay. So these people, they died in bed on this date. And this was how old they were, and this is how it went down." So I had to kind of think like an investigator. If I was an investigator walking into this room, then what would I be able to parse out just from observation, not being myself who just happens to know everything.
Sarah Enni: So you started with knowing everything that happened, and that will inevitably help if you want to still kind of wing it a little bit and see where your characters guide you.
Kendare Blake: Definitely. And luckily, All These Bodies is a short book. It's like 70,000 words, maybe. Compared to Three Dark Crowns which has been pushing like a hundred thousand words. So it felt very succinct and less overwhelming cause I didn't have that much to work with. It was just all kind of moving the pieces around and maintaining the mystery, but getting to that ending that I knew was where we had to get to. Which is not normal for me either.
Sarah Enni: I wanted to ask, you're saying Truman Capote and In Cold Blood, are also a part of the inspiration here. And Michael, your narrator, is a journalist sort of in the Truman Capote vein. And I was thinking about the line between seeking the truth and humanizing a villain. And when I say villain, I mean, in real life, this person was a villain, right? Who committed these crimes.
I just am interested in what you thought as you went about it. Of course, I'm interested in how journalists, you know, the difference between being curious, and romanticizing something. That's gets a little sticky, especially when you're talking about stuff like this, that has real victims and real consequences. How did you think about that? And how did you want to explore that in the actual book?
Kendare Blake: Well, that was big in mind for the character of Michael. Michael is spending so much time with this accused murderer who everybody thinks is probably guilty, and definitely involved in one way or another, accomplice or victim, you're not quite sure. But she was there, you know that much. She was found covered in their blood. So it got pretty sticky for Capote himself. Did you see any of Capote movies that came out? What is it like 15 years ago now? Oh my god, they're so old.
Sarah Enni: I saw the Phillip Seymore Hoffman one, for sure.
Kendare Blake: Okay. So I've seen the Philip Seymour Hoffman one, Capote, which was excellent. And I also saw Infamous, with Sandra Bullock in the Harper Lee role.
Sarah Enni: Right, I forgot about that one.
Kendare Blake: And yeah, the little guy, Toby Jones, in the Capote role. I think they came out in the same year so Infamous kind of got overshadowed by that amazing Hoffman performance. But Toby Jones did a fantastic job portraying him as well. And kind of portrayed the flashier side of him a little bit, you know, that New York socialite gossip who was in with the downtown ladies, and then he swings into this small Kansas town and just bedazzles... not bedazzled [laughs]. Bedazzing is a different thing!
Who just dazzles these small towns people with stories about Humphrey Bogart and hanging out on movie sets and gets them to open up to him and allow him special privileges. And he thinks that's totally fine for a while. And he knows he needs to get access to the killers. And then he spends time with the killers and realizes that the killers are also real people and that they have their own story.
And that even if they have done a terrible thing, eventually if you spend enough time with another human person, you're going to see the human in them. And it got so messy for him. I mean, I think it broke him in many ways, having to be there for their execution and having to come to terms with that in himself. The fact that he cared about these people who did this monstrous thing and that he was exploiting them to some extent. Because he kind of needed them to die so his book could have an ending.
So that was always in my mind when I was working with Michael, because he wants to tell the story so well, but the more time he spends with Marie and the more he gets to know her as a person, how does he separate the girl that he comes to know with the person that he knows has to have been involved, in some way, with the slaughter of this perfectly innocent family and all these other innocent people?
And also, one of the big threads that runs throughout the book is the stories that young women are allowed to tell if they want to be believed. That always caught in my craw. Caril Ann Fugate, is there anything she could've said that would've made people believe her? I don't think so. I think they already had a pretty good read on who they thought she was. You know, she didn't smile enough. Doesn't that sound familiar? She didn't smile enough. She was promiscuous.
One of the reporters who was covering the story, one of the two main reporters who covered her story, actually said, "You know, I knew that within just moments of looking at her, I knew she was guilty. I knew she was at least an accomplice if not an outright murderer." I mean, he actually said this. He actually said, "I mean, she's done every sex act in the book, so she knows what's going on."
Like that means anything! Never mind that she probably didn't. She had a physical examination and every sex act in the book seems like a stretch. But even if she had done every sex act in the book, does that then mean she would also kill?
Sarah Enni: Be a murderer?
Kendare Blake: The need for Marie to be able to tell her own story and to have someone with an open ear, was very important to me. Because I was aware that her story was already being told in the newspapers and in the public in ways that she could not control the narrative. So having Michael there to help her control the narrative, was important. Even though people have asked why I chose Michael to be the narrator if it was important for Marie to tell her story.
But that was kind of just another level of that, like, "Yeah, in 1958, even if you want to tell your story, you're gonna need a boy to filter it through." But it was also a practical decision because Marie was the one who knows the truth. All of the secrets are wound up in her. So if I was to speak from her mind, I wouldn't be able to keep those secrets for very long. The reader would just have to know, and I didn't want them to know.
Sarah Enni: And the book would be over pretty quick. It also strikes me that using Michael as the point-of-view character, allows you to talk about ambiguity and truth. And what we, as readers of the news, think we know for sure, versus the unknowability of it was just her and this other person. And we can never really know what happened. I mean, I'm interested in what it was like to sort of delve into that.
Kendare Blake: And that's the main theme of the book is, belief. And why we believe the things that we do and truth and the nature of it. And we hear things like objective truth, but many, many, many times in reality, the truth is more subjective. I was thinking a lot about the murder cases that I've followed over the course of my life. We see them in media all the time. We can't avoid them. We all know murderers and we know murders. I knew Caril Ann Fugate and I don't know if she was guilty or innocent, I don't! I've researched the heck out of this and I still go back and forth. And there's just certain things that you will never know.
So yeah, it was definitely fun, um, or, not fun. It was interesting to explore that through the character of Michael who came into this as a journalist on the hunt for the truth. The truth to a journalist is such a sacred thing. And then for him to have to kind of reevaluate his definition of it over the course of the book was nice. If you can't tell, I really enjoyed the character of Michael. I got very attached to that kid. He's just a good kid.
Sarah Enni: A good egg. You're functioning in actually the cross section of a few genres in All These Bodies. But mystery is what sort of, without spoiling things, is what we can kind of talk about, and the true crime element of it. And within the context of a true crime novel, and a mystery novel, you are interested in exploring ambiguity. But that's sort of uncomfortable for an audience, right?
An audience coming to these things, sort of like at the end of a podcast about true crime, I want to know who did it, and their trial, and what happened, you know? So you're sort of asking the audience to come with you on a journey that may, or may not, end to their satisfaction. I just want to know how you thought about that.
Kendare Blake: I knew [chuckles]. I knew that that was gonna be tough cause I'm like everybody else. I want to know. "Just tell me exactly what happened. Let me sleep at night. Just let me put this to bed." But when I was thinking about the murder shows and the documentaries that we've watched, very rarely do we actually...like think of the Zodiac. Do we know anything about that? There's a lot of, oftentimes, unanswered questions that we just kind of have to deal with as human beings. We just have to maybe make up our own minds.
And that's kind of what I was hoping that readers would do. I give you some of it. I tell you exactly what happened at the trial. I tell you the outcome of that trial and the end of Marie's story. But there are remaining, I mean, that whole, "What really happened" thing? Well, that's the question that you have to ask yourself. Do you believe Marie, or do you not? Do you believe this other narrative that's kind of formed around her?
And you can look at the evidence. I mean, there's evidence there but there's also questions surrounding that evidence. There were a couple of cases that I kept thinking back to as I was writing. The case of the Black Dalia, you know? A young girl, basically vivisected and given that horrible smile, a razor blade smile, and that was never solved. And she was dumped in broad daylight in a public space. Like, "How did they not catch that guy?" Like, "How?"
And there was another murder, it was an ax murder, and a whole family was killed. And they never caught him. He bludgeoned them all in their beds with the blunt side of the ax. And he left like a bowl of bloody water and some raw bacon on the table. That must've just driven some investigator just crazy like, "What's with the bacon? Why is the bacon here? Were you washing your fingers to maybe make some bacon and then just decided to leave?"
All those unanswered questions, and cases of unanswered questions, was in my mind as I was crafting the ending. But the ambiguity is on purpose. It's definitely deliberate and I wanted to leave space. I was trying to create a ripping good murder story, something that keeps you turning the pages. But I also wanted to leave room for readers to kind of scratch beneath the surface if they wanted, to dig for extra themes and stuff. So yeah, I know it's gonna drive some readers up the wall and I apologize for that. But I don't really.
[Both laugh]
Sarah Enni: But yeah, also authorial intent. I'm interested in what, and I asked this of Stephanie too, because there's some element to which we're all drawn to true crime. I just wonder for you personally, obviously some of this stuff was lingering, and you were thinking about it, and it was sticking with you. But what do you think you're able to access through true crime? And was writing about it and thinking about it achieving a catharsis for you? Or, what do you think you were working through with it?
Kendare Blake: Well, Hmm. I dunno. Maybe we all have kind of an interesting complex relationship with people who can kill. Because at some point, we all ask ourselves, "Well, do I think I could kill?" And you know, those answers vary given the situation. And when I'm watching true crime documentaries, something that I always love, I love the parts where they're interviewing the killers and getting a confession out of them. I love that!
Because it's so fascinating how many of them just seem completely detached, you know? Like they've completely dissociated from the entire event. It's not like you think that Ted Bundy, if you asked him about his crimes, well, he must've been so precious and pervy about it, that you would never get him to shut up.
Most of these people were like, "Oh, well, and then you stabbed him." And they'd be like, "Yeah. And then I stabbed him." "Well, how many times?" "Well, I think I stabbed him about 14, maybe 15 times." And there was like no emotion in their voice whatsoever. It's like they're watching it on a video feed, or something. They've completely gone somewhere else. Or maybe they're psychos. And there really is no attachment to that moment.
But that question, dissociation or psycho? That's always been really fascinating to me. So getting to write in a true crime kind of mindset and just getting to think about those kinds of people, the people that do crime, was really, I don't want to say fun, but it's fun.
Sarah Enni: And because you were working with the point-of-view of our narrator, who is not a participant, you're sort of holding onto the string of humanity there. There's sort of a grounded-ness to that. You can address these things and really get close to this person who may, or may not, have done these horrible things, or certainly witnessed them and was there. But you can bring it back and check in with the reader a little bit. I think that that was smart from an audience perspective. And maybe from an author perspective.
Kendare Blake: Marie, the accused murderer Marie, she was the hardest character to know for sure. She changed the most through drafts. At first she was very, very capable. She was extremely, well-spoken almost eloquent. I think I was almost aiming towards like the, "Ah yes. Well, this girl sounds almost Victorian." So you could believe that she could be on this vampiric spree with this vampire.
I was going very Interview With the Vampire style and it wasn't working. That's when I realized, "No, I've got to go more back to Caril. She's got to be an angry kid. She's gotta be an angry girl." And once I let her start running at the mouth, and start yelling, that's when I finally got to know her. So she didn't really take shape until the second or third draft.
Sarah Enni: Hmm, interesting. I'm interested from just a nuts-and-bolts perspective, did you always know it was going to be shorter like this? Or was length something that surprised you?
Kendare Blake: I always felt like it would be short. I just wanted to keep the story moving along. And there were only so many reveals that were going to happen. And the bulk of the book is Michael's interactions with Marie and parsing out the story of what happened. Initially there were a lot more of her recounting the actual details of the murders. But those, they're very similar, you know? Like, "Ah, you've heard one throat slashing, you've heard them all!"
So I cut them down to the most pertinent ones. And it's also in first person, and Michael's voice is very journalistic. He tends not to be very flowery. He's trying to write it kind of like a journal entry style. So I had the sense that it just wasn't going to be a fantasy with a ton of world-building or a magic system that I needed to define.
And the cast of characters is also very small. It's Michael and Marie in a cell, it's the town's sheriff, it's a couple of towns people from this small town that is terrorized and changed through this experience. So yeah, I always knew it was gonna be short.
Sarah Enni: Sometimes some people, as you say, your experience has been to write books that are longer. I feel like sometimes I've talked to authors who are like, "Oh, the next one will be short. It'll be nice and short." And then it balloons up!
Kendare Blake: It's like 150 thousand!
Sarah Enni: So it's admirable that you actually were able to keep the story in kind of the wheelhouse you wanted it to be in without letting it grow outside of its boundaries.
Kendare Blake: And that's the kind of writer I am. I think if you look at the Three Dark Crowns books, they got a little longer towards the end, like Three Dark Crowns is the shortest, I think it's maybe 83,000 and then One Dark Throne is like 90 some. But then the rest of them all stayed like 90-some. I just don't know what that is.
Sometimes I get a...
Sarah Enni: Like a rhythm.
Kendare Blake: Yeah! I work in Scrivener, which I know you do as well. And I set my little handy Scrivener daily word count. And so I feel like, "Is this influencing the rhythm with which I craft my chapters? Are my chapters becoming tailor-made to this word count?" And as I see my little green bar rising, do I start just like wrapping it up and bringing it in for a landing? And I don't know.
Sarah Enni: Because, as you say, you are not typically a plotter, but you are a pretty regimented writer. Am I right that you write pretty much every day?
Kendare Blake: Well, hmm. If left to my own devices, I would not write every day, but I have lately been on the kind of deadlines that require it. So yes, I will write a minimum of four days and I'll squeak in five or six if I can.
Sarah Enni: I hadn't thought about it quite that way before, that's a really interesting idea. Is the rhythm of a book determined by... if you are regimented and creating word counts, are you then there by setting a tone, or a pace rather?
Kendare Blake: I worry about that. Cause I noticed that I'm like, "Okay, all of my chapters now seem to be about the same length. This is bothering me." It's bothering me right now talking about it. Because the creative, you know, it should just be allowed to flow. I will say that All These Bodies had a much lower daily word count goal than my fantasies do.
I would be in the chair for the same amount of time. And if I got a thousand words out, it was a good day. Because Michael was very deliberate. Every word choice was important, the way that he told the story was important. Whereas with a fantasy it's more about the sweeping of the plot, and all the things that need to happen, and setting the scene very prettily. So even though it was short, it took me about the same amount of time to write as one of my fantasies, which is much slower.
Sarah Enni: And there's research for historical, and research for these actual events that they are based on. So yeah, that adds in a lot of time too that doesn't appear in a word count, but is vital to the book, to those kinds of books.
Kendare Blake: Yes, we don't think about that, usually. We're so focused on word counts and getting our butts in the chair, but there's a lot of stuff that counts as work that goes into it. There's a lot of prep work. There's a lot of downtime. You reach a point in a draft where downtime doesn't even exist because the minute you log off, you start thinking about what you're gonna do the next day.
And even if you stop thinking about that you know your subconscious is doing stuff because you'll just be in the shower and just be like, "And then it's on fire!" And you're like, "Well, I clearly wasn't thinking about that right now. So I'm still working on this dumb book."
Sarah Enni: It's growing its second eye, or what have you.
Kendare Blake: Yeah. Thank goodness.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about In Every Generation.
Kendare Blake: Yes! Oh my god, let's talk about Buffy. Are you a Buffy fan?
Sarah Enni: I am a Buffy fan. So, I'm gonna tell you my history with Buffy and then I want to hear yours and how this came about. But I watched Buffy later in like 2012 or 13 or so. So I was an adult person. I don't know what I was doing instead of watching Buffy when it was on cause I'm exactly the right age for it.
But I was doing some data entry job and Buffy was on. I just binged the hell out of it and just watched the whole thing and was obsessed, am obsessed, absolutely incredible TV show. So I want to hear about your history with it and how this opportunity came about to write a YA continuation of this canon.
Kendare Blake: Oh, it feels like a miracle. And also [chuckles], I don't want to say a curse, but it feels like a miracle and a curse. So after Three Dark Crowns wrapped up, after Five Dark Fates, I was tired. I was really, really tired. I'd been on a crash schedule for that many years. And it was like the first time that I'd ever been behind on things. Like I was turning in things late.
It was getting away from me and I'd been with the queens and on Fennbirn for so long that I thought, you know... there's pressure on YA authors, in particular, to put a book out every year. And I was like, "No, I cannot. I'm so sorry. I wish I could, but I need time to reset. I need time to catch up. I need time to leave Fennbirn behind and mentally move on to do these other things."
So when we sold All These Bodies, in the deal where we also sold my next fantasy series, it was always set to come out, like All These Bodies was always gonna come out two years after Five Dark Fates. A little breathing room.
I was so excited about the breathing room. I was just looking at my calendar and it was just this broad expanse of time. And I'm like, "I'm gonna do this kind of research. And I'm gonna read this many books. And I'm just gonna flail around in it."
And then my agent contacted me and said, "Disney would like you to write a spinoff continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What do you think?" And I said, "What do I think? I think yes, but no, I can't! I just cleared my schedule and I have all this beautiful time." And then I was like, "But you know? It's Buffy. And so yes, I will do this. I will do this one book". And she was like, "It's three books." And I was like, "Damn it!"
And I'm like, "Okay, magician woman. When do you think I'm gonna have time to do these three Buffy books?" And my agent is very calm, she is always chill. No matter what news there is, good, bad, whatever, it's always the same soothing, wonderful tone of voice. And she's like, "Well, let's look through your calendar and see just when we might be able to set these deadlines to make it very doable for you and the Buffy editor and make sure we hit all these delivery goals."
So she let me sit down and go through and kind of set, you know, like, "Okay, I think I can write the draft from here to here. And then could you please get me revisions from here to here? Because I have something else that I need to start right away after that." Because I have very specific windows of time.
And you've worked with editors, of course, in your own writing. And usually I, at least, like to be very flexible with my editor's schedule because I know that she is juggling so many more projects than I am. I'm focusing on my one book and she's like focusing on 25 and trying to shepherd each of them through to publication.
So if she tells me that she needs an extra couple of months, well, that is A-okay, because I know that she needs them. But in this case I was like, "I really can't. I really need you to get them to me at this point." And luckily the editor of Buffy, Jocelyn Davies and for a moment Kieran Viola, they were like, [blows a raspberry] "Yeah, fine. Totally cool." I'm like, "Sweet!" And we were able to make it happen. And it was the most fun thing ever.
Sarah Enni: Amazing! Oh my god. Okay. But before we get into it, I want to have you talk about your history with Buffy and then we'll do the pitch. And then I want to talk about the writing experience of the book. But what's been your fandom experience with Buffy?
Kendare Blake: Oh god, I feel like I was a fan of Buffy from the womb. Like if I had stuff to do, I used to make my mom tape them on old VHS tapes when they were first coming out, so that I wouldn't actually miss the episodes. And she was like, "Do I really have to?" I'm like, "Yeah. And you also have to tape Roswell, please. Yes, it's on right before then. Thank you."
And she actually got really into Roswell and then my mom and I would talk about Roswell. And she was like a shipper of the other thing. And I'm like, "Eww, gross that ship." So talking shipping with your mom. Sometimes that's what happens.
And I didn't watch Buffy right away, but I think I found it like mid-season three and then backtracked and watched the rest and then watched it until it ended in 2003. And it's, I guess, my favorite show of all time. It's the one that I can re-watch the most and just always be amused and always find something new about a performance.
Even if I've seen the episode seven, eight times, I'll notice something new about something that a character does and just completely fall in love again. It was perfectly cast. It was perfectly written. I mean, ah, it's just a masterclass on so many things. I'm a huge, huge Buffy admirer.
Sarah Enni: As a writer, some of the stuff, I mean, they gave themselves unreal challenges. They pulled off wild season-long arcs. As a writer, you watch it and you're just like... and that was back in the day when TV shows were like 21 episodes a year! It was like, "How in the world did this possibly happen?" This like little miracle for eight seasons. And it changed networks. I mean, that was so dramatic when it was like actually happening.
Kendare Blake: And I think you develop a different kind of fandom when you have to wait from week to week and in the season break.
Sarah Enni: You're talking to a LOST fan here. It is so different from when people binged it.
Kendare Blake: You have so much time to speculate from week to week. And to really feel like you're going through things with the characters over time. That's something that I've noticed that I don't quite get when I binge something. Is that it all feels like it happened very fast and almost has less significance because it's like, "Ooh, it was like a month of your life. Who cares?"
Whereas with Buffy, it was like six months of your life and six months of her life. And then we had to wait over summer vacation with her, for her to go visit her dad and come back to Sunnydale.
Sarah Enni: Or die!
Kendare Blake: Yeah! Or die and come back from a hell dimension. Whatever! Whatever she was doing, we had to wait for her as fans. And then we got to come back with her for every school year and kind of grow up with her, you know?
So it was a special kind of fandom. It was very formative in my sense of humor, which is why I felt like I could write it. Because I'm like, "Well, yeah, I have a Buffy sense of humor, so yes, I can write Buffy jokes. I get them."
Sarah Enni: I'd love for you to give us the formal pitch for In Every Generation.
Kendare Blake: It's a new generation of slayers. So in every generation, a Slayer is born. But since they fought the first in the season finale, all the slayers have been activated, like all of them. Willow channeled the source of the Slayer power through the Scythe, activated all the Slayers, and there hasn't been a new Slayer since.
And when the book opens, there's been an incident, an attack on Slayer Fest, which is like the quarterly Slayer convention where they check in and see how everything's going with the Slayer army. And most, if not, all of the slayers are presumed dead.
This strikes very hard for Willow Rosenberg who is Buffy's best friend. And she's been living in Sunnydale this whole time, raising her daughter, Frankie, who's an eco-witch and super perky and cute and kind of very much like Buffy and Willow and Sailor Moon all put into one. She just has that kind of energy.
When that happens, the attack at Slayer Fest, Frankie becomes a Slayer. So now she's the first ever Slayer-which, and along with the help of some new friends; a Sage demon, a werewolf who is related to the Osborne clan of werewolves, she has to learn how to be a Slayer and step into her Aunt, quote unquote, Buffy's shoes, while keeping the Hellmouth from rumbling and facing her very own first, Big Bad.
Sarah Enni: Well, that was really well done. Good job.
Kendare Blake: Thank you.
Sarah Enni: So [pauses] how did you even wrap your head around that? How did you get into the canon and think about where you wanted it to go? What was this process like?
Kendare Blake: Oh god, it was so scary, I'm not gonna lie. It was so scary. It was so joyful, but so terrifying. They had an outline of the series. And much like my own outlines, when I outline my series, which are total lies that I give to my publisher because I don't know, as I've told you, how things are going to end I just make something up and it changes later.
They gave me a pretty decent outline for book one and then like a paragraph each on books two and three. Giving me the characters and, "This is the situation. There's been an attack. And, do something with that." And I was like, "Okay, you've given me a starting point. And you've given me characters I can work with. I can work with Willow. I can work with Oz. I can work with Spike."
And those were the characters that if you had asked me to write a dream Buffy book and said, "Which characters do you want?" I would have said those three. Well, except for Buffy herself, of course. I would have always had Buffy.
So I was like, "Oh, this is the best." But I had also heard, I have writer friend who writes in IP, and they've told me like, "Sometimes the rules can be very rigid, especially if there are other things going on within the universe that you have to write around and make everything fit together."
So in the first draft I didn't use Zander at all, even though I needed him for a plot point and I just had to work around it ineffectively. I was afraid that since I hadn't been given express use of Zander, that I couldn't touch him. I could mention him, but he couldn't appear.
And then my editor was like, "Well, wouldn't this work better if it was Zander?" I was like, "It would! Can I have him?" And she said, "Yeah, go ahead." So I wrote a whole other draft using Zander. And that was really fun because I hadn't figured on getting to have Zander's voice on the page and I loved Zander's voice and it was great to be able to use him.
But there were things like that where I was so intimidated about what I could and couldn't do. Obviously there were rules about people you can kill and people you can't kill and what you think characters should be doing or where they're at.
Sarah Enni: I guess part of the difference here is that you are being asked to create canon of your own. Buffy in its world exists. Kiersten White (New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning, and critically acclaimed author of many books, including the And I Darken trilogy, the Slayer series, the Camelot Rising trilogy, and her upcoming adult debut, Hide. Listen to her First Draft interview here) has written some in this universe, there's comic books, so there's, a really expansive universe.
And the wonderful thing about things that exist in those kinds of ways is like, "There's this branch, of whatever. There's this run." And there's a little bit more flexibility, I think, in the minds of fans about what's canon, and what's not. There's a little bit of flexibility with the reality. So I would imagine it'd be a little bit less terrifying.
I was worried about it though, because within this trilogy, what are you intending to be canon? And just the shows. So as far as In Every Generation is concerned, it's just the shows. So it's Buffy and Angel. And anything Buffy related that happened on Angel, like Spike coming back from the dead in Angel and now he's back here. So that's explained through that.
We get to touch on that a little bit and I get to reference stuff from Angel as well as stuff from Buffy. Which is fun cause I was also an Angel fan. Like I followed him over there.
Sarah Enni: What was this experience like, as you say they kind of have an outline for you, were you sending chapters? What was the editorial experience like?
Kendare Blake: I drafted the whole thing over a summer, and I'm doing the same thing over this summer. I wrote the first book last summer and book two this summer book three next summer. And I've basically just got like from June to September, that's Buffy and that's what I'm doing with my time.
And then I just turned it in. And I was kind of worried because I was like, "Well, okay, you gave me this jumping off point and then you gave me the rest of it, but I kind of chucked the rest of it out and just went in a similar, but different, direction."
And then I think at the end of their proposal, they had some snarky send off like, "And then they went out for pie." You know? Like, "Hmm, yeah, save the world and then we'd go out for pie." And I think that's basically all I did. At the end they do go out for pie, but the rest of it was totally not. Like I created my own Big Bad, I had my own character development.
So no, I just gave them the whole thing and then hoped they liked where I went with it. And they did. And then we went back and forth a few times. I think we went through two or three rounds of bigger edits and then two or three rounds of line level edits. And then the arcs came out and then we still hadn't gotten our sensitivity reads back. So it went through one more even after the arcs. But it's fun every time. That is the thing is, Buffy is so much fun.
Sarah Enni: Especially, I can imagine, you're bouncing it with all these bodies who are coming off of the dark fantasy stuff. This is so humor forward. And I know you as a very funny person. So it is funny to think that you just had to spend all this time in this world where you really were restraining yourself and being a little more literary, a little more like serious, and then getting the chance to kind of bust out.
Kendare Blake: Yeah, oh god, I just went hog wild. Nothing is serious. When I was writing In Every Generation, it was during the pandemic, you know? So it was a very, very dark time. And I was using my writing as an escape. Like many of us were. Like, "Let's just get out of this reality and hang out in something that's infinitely better. Even zombie fiction would be better at this point."
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say "Hooray! Demons." Yes, a relief.
Kendare Blake: Yes, anything! Murders. It's great. I love it. But my only goal was to channel [pauses], if you watch Buffy, she matures and the show matures along with the seasons. So with the first book of Every Generation, I was really trying to channel those early season kind of energy, because Frankie is young. She's barely 16 when the book opens, much like Buffy was young.
And Buffy came into the series as an experienced Slayer. You know, she'd already gotten some confidence. She'd been a Slayer for about a year before she shows up in Sunnydale. So she's already got some Slayer swagger. Where Frankie has none. She's so just out of her depth and, she's a real try-hard, that's my Frankie. She's such a try-hard and she's gonna get it in the end, but by golly, she's gonna look pretty foolish for a while.
So I was really wanting for it to feel like a classic Buffy episode and have the things about Buffy that I found super nostalgic. I wanted check-ins that were believable with our beloved characters. I wanted to write a Willow that you could believe, this could be Willow as a mother. I wanted an Oz that, this could be Oz if he's trying to raise his teenage nephew werewolf. This could be Spike. Well, you know, he's Spike.
[Both laugh].
Kendare Blake: And I wanted Scooby meetings in a library. I wanted patrols through the cemetery. I wanted a Big Bad who's kind of wacky and zany, but also super evil. And, of course, I wanted a hot swoony demon, that is a Buffy staple, I'm sorry, he needs to be included. So I just wanted all of that and it really saved my quarantine summer. It was so much fun. And in short, do you watch Cobra Kai?
Sarah Enni: Yes. I've only seen one and a half seasons, but I was obsessed with it.
Kendare Blake: I am obsessed with it. And that is what I was trying to do with Buffy. I was trying to Cobra Kai the hell out of it. I think what Cobra Kai does so brilliantly is it gives you just enough of a callback to give you that... the nostalgia in Cobra, Kai does not feel shoehorned in, whatsoever.
It's just right there. There it is. That's what I want. I want the waxing on and the waxing off, but I want it within a story that is an updated, full-of-heart story in itself. I wanted it to pull from the zeitgeists that surrounded Buffy in the years after the show ended, like Cobra Kai did by making Johnny the character focus.
Sarah Enni: You had a wonderful quote where you said, "If you want to visualize the writing of this book, just imagine the iconic scene from Singing in the Rain, except instead of Gene Kelly, it's me. And instead of that wet street with that lamppost, it's Sunnydale cemetery full of vampires." [Laughs] Which is a really great mental image.
Kendare Blake: That was pretty much it. That was my summer, just swinging through Sunnydale cemetery.
Sarah Enni: On your Instagram, you've also been keeping your followers updated on writing the next fantasy series. You mentioned the code name is Amazon Jedi's. What can you tell us about it? You had, "It features a Fennbirn queen after her reign and after she's left the island - spoiler alert - she's a famous war Queen and I freaking love her." So we have that much information, but what can you tell us about it?
Kendare Blake: So I kind of worry that there's a misconception, that it is another Fennbirn book, it's not. It's not. The Fennbirn queen is in it, she is a character and she's more of a character than I intended. I kind of intended for her to be a cameo, but if you know anything about Fennbirn queens, they do what they want. And she did.
She was like, "No, I'm in it now, deal with me." And I ended up having so much fun writing her. But Amazon Jedi's, the first book should come out in 2023, it got pushed back a year. That was my fault. I didn't realize I miscalculated. Remember when I said that I laid out my calendar? I guess I must have input like an extra 12 months in there, cause I thought I had time to write book two and I didn't.
I started flailing as I was coming to the end of writing Amazon Jedi's one. And I thought, "Well then I'll write Amazon Jedi's two...when?" There was no time! There was absolutely none. So I asked my editor and she said, "It's okay. We can push it back a year." So that'll be 2023 and 2024. And Amazon Jedi's is the perfect code name for it because that is what it is. It's like if the Jedi order was Amazons.
So if you are into, strangely enough, the prequels, the Star Wars prequels, if you like that, like Obi-Wan and Anakin apprentice-master energy, there's a lot of that in Amazon Jedi's. Cause it's about a young girl, an orphan, a foundling, who was found by the order. And now she has to prove herself and pass four tests to become a full member of the order.
And to do that, she has to guide a hero on to his glory and is not supposed to fall in love with that hero. Just an FYI, that's like a little footnote that maybe she missed, but you're not supposed to do that. So, of course, chaos ensues.
Sarah Enni: Oh, I love that! So I know you can't tell us much more than that, but I'm so excited to read it. I want to hear about what this has been like being on this... you had a really intense schedule for the whole previous series, four books.
And then you sort of thought you were in the clear for a minute, and now you have this long stretch where you have to be really committed to a schedule. And that has happened over pandemic and our continuing struggle with the pandemic.
So I would just love to hear about what that's been like for you and what, if anything, you've learned about your process through this?
Kendare Blake: I have been more productive over the pandemic than ever before. And I think that is because a lot of things that were happening in the world, and in my life, made me run straight for my office to hide. I wanted to get away from everything.
Over the year, the first year of the pandemic, my mom, who is mentally ill and physically disabled came to live with me. And I became her caretaker, her 24/7 caretaker, which was an adjustment. And not to say that I was running away from my mom, but I was totally running away from my mom.
Sarah Enni: We've all been there.
Kendare Blake: And she would be like, "Yeah," you know? My mom and I have that kind of relationship where we yell at each other and it's fine. It's fine. I'm always grateful to be on deadline no matter how hard it is, and no matter how it feels like I'm scrambling, or maybe I'm resentful of having to rush, I'm always grateful that someone wants my book.
Like, "Somebody's gonna take this and do something when I'm done with it." And that's a wonderful feeling. But I did feel guilty about missing so many deadlines. I've never missed a deadline before and I missed this one by a year. A year! Whew, yeah. So how has it been for you?
Sarah Enni: Well also really productive for similar reasons. I was like, "Quick, let me do anything besides just read the news all day." It's really hard to even remember back. I don't know if you've done this, but this mind exercise of like, "No, really, what was it like in June of 2020?"
And just mentally bringing back in all the factors that were at play then. And it's like, "Oh yeah, that was horrible." It was a really, really tough, sad, stressful, angry time. And how did we do it? You know?
It's like one of those things where you look back and you're like, "I don't know. I think everyone was just trying, in their own way, to make it through." And for me, making it through meant writing a whole bunch and doing a lot of podcast stuff.
And, for me, I definitely changed how I work. I got a lot more goal-oriented. I was like, "I can't just be doing manic work all the time anymore. I have to be more strategic and figure out my shit." So I did a lot of that work, which will carry forward and I'm really grateful for it. But it was definitely like, "I either do this or I explode mentally."
Kendare Blake: We're what? We're over a year-and-a-half into the pandemic now, over a year-and-a-half. And I don't know if I had it just mentally in my head that this was just gonna last a year and then we'd be back on track, like A-okay.
I think we keep, or at least I do, I keep putting these goalposts in my head and then having to move them like, "Well, if we just make it to the vaccine, then it'll be okay. If we just make it to this, or this, or this. And eventually everything will just go back to normal."
And the fact that it hasn't, and it feels like this 2020, I keep wanting to call it 2020, even though it's almost the end of 2021, because it still feels like 2020. And this whole two year...god, what if it's three year? Three year phase of time when we look back on it, it's going to feel like one congealed, mass of crap.
It's just going to be this blurry... like, I have no idea what time it is. I have no concept of you look back and you think like, "Oh yeah, that was like nine months ago." No idea. There's no sense of that. It's the same thing every single day with no breaks.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, so we have very subtle change of seasons, too. So that doesn't help because it feels like it's all the same. You're in California, you know what I mean? So yeah, it's really, really odd.
Sarah Enni: I've been talking to friends about like, "What do you think?" You know how - and forgive me for bringing 9/11 into this conversation - but you know how when you look at movies that came out the summer before 9/11 happened and you're like, "Wow, that was a different world.” And art just shifted because America shifted.
I've been reading this book about directors that served in World War II and how their art changed after they came back from that. So it's definitely on my mind, like, "What is the landscape gonna be?"
I like to think that we're going to be impacted by this in maybe positive ways, like thinking differently and more realistically about what's important, et cetera, et cetera. But what do you think you could see changing as a result of this?
Kendare Blake: I definitely think that people will have been changed. We've had to come up with a lot of coping skills that we didn't have before. And looking back and seeing how art, in particular, and the things that we consume, the things that we create, changed. I have no idea. I couldn't even hazard a guess.
If I had to hazard a guess about the immediate after, it would be a strict air of refusal. Just denial. I don't want to reflect on this time. I don't want to read fiction about the pandemic. I do not. I want anything else. I want anything else.
Sarah Enni: And again, forgive me for the - 9/11 is such a tortured metaphor for it - but we didn't all of a sudden see a rash of novels or books or movies about 9/11 directly, it was more like, "We've all changed." And the tone of everything. It was like indirectly influential in all these things. And that's what I was thinking cause I'm with you, I am not going to watch a pandemic rom-com, or god knows. You know? None of that.
But there's absolutely going to be just like shades of it in every other thing, and working through how this affects all of the rest of our lives. That's gonna be, I think, the fertile landscape.
Kendare Blake: And I think it'll be more. I think it will be larger. It'll be more expensive than 9/11. Because while 9/11 affected us in the way that we saw the world, and the way that we understood the world changed, 9/11 was something that very few of us had to actually go through, had to actually endure. I didn't lose any family, personally, in 9/11.
I don't think that's going to be the same as we come out of this pandemic. It's going to have, even for those of us who were lucky enough to not lose somebody that we love and know, we also had to live through the experience of it. This is shared. This is worldwide. We have all had the same 18 months. And I have no idea. I mean, what can we say?
I saw a nature documentary about how nature came back to life over the year that we weren't in it. How whales came back, and seabirds had like their best breeding season in like 50 years, and just different ways that nature has rebounded without humanity encroaching on it.
This whole thing almost feels like a huge experiment. There's been no other phenomenon that has affected humanity in the way that this has affected the entirety of humanity. Us staying in, had visible effects on the whole planet. There's nothing like that.
Sarah Enni: And this is why, I mean, there is no answer to it. We're all just gonna have to wait and see. But I will say that I talked to a literary agent - and I really can't remember now who exactly it was - but they were like, "All I can say is the stuff I'm seeing from my clients is weird."
[Both laugh].
Sarah Enni: It's like, "Great. I'm down for that. Everyone get a little kooky. We've all been inside. Just mine in there, see what's there. Let's get weird for a while, cause we gotta shake things up." That's how it really feels.
Well, that was a tangent, but thank you for going with me on this because it's something that's like, obviously top of mind, especially for artists. I'm just like, "What's gonna be relevant? What's gonna be interesting?"
I'd love to wrap up with advice. You know, actually, I'd really love to hear advice for people who might have the opportunity to write in a canon or in an IP environment. Like if you've learned anything about how to coordinate with people, or when to really just go your own way? Or I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Kendare Blake: So a lot of that advice is going to be kind of premature because a big part of it is going to be how the book is received. And I keep telling myself this, even though it's hard because Buffy is filled with so much joy, and the writing of it is filled with so much joy, and the book itself is very lighthearted. It's not seasoned too heavy. It doesn't have that drama because it's an introduction to the characters. You need to get to know them before I can really rip them apart and have you care about it.
So Kiersten White, who you mentioned, wrote The Slayer and The Chosen books, like the minute the announcement came out, she DM'd and she's like, "Oh my god, Hey! I'm so excited for these books! And if you ever need anything, you know, just whatever." And if you are writing in an IP and somebody who's written in the IP makes that offer for you, like take them up on it.
Because just knowing that she's there and if I have a Buffy panic moment, I could just be like, "Kiersten, am I doing this wrong?" It's a nice security blanket to have. And also be mindful of your fandom. That's a piece of advice that I have heard, and the Buffy fandom is great and cool and, so far, have been very, very chill.
But some of those fandoms, depending on which you're writing for, can get kind of intense. Be prepared to be challenged by the fandom, and to have your choices challenged. And also understand that that's a valid challenge because for something like Buffy, or for something like Star Wars, it's been around for even longer, or something like Lord of the Rings. It's been around long enough, and consumed by enough of us, that we all feel a sense of ownership over it.
And you're not going to please everyone. And some fans who, despite sharing a love for it like you do, are going to feel like you did it completely wrong. And you have to expect that. I'm saying this for myself as much as anyone else, because I'm trying to prepare for that because it's going to hurt.
But I understand that. Because you want someone to write more of this thing that you love, but you don't want them to write more of this thing you love because you want them to touch it, but you don't want them to touch it too much or in the wrong way. So yeah. Fandom's complicated.
Sarah Enni: Oh Kendare, this is so fun. Thank you so much for giving me all this time today.
Kendare Blake: Oh, well thank you for having me. And I hope that we can do this someday again in person and just hang out, but I'm grateful for this podcast because it has given us an excuse to continue to get together over the years.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I agree. It's been fun.
Kendare Blake: And I can't wait to see what you're doing next because I really loved Tell Me Everything. My friend and I were just talking about it this morning. Cause I continually send it with her on vacation. I'm like, "This is the perfect vacation read. Read it now. You're gonna love it!"
Sarah Enni: Amazing! Ahh, thank you. That's so sweet.
Blake, Kendare ONE GIRL IN ALL THE WORLD Disney-Hyperion (Teen None) $18.99 1, 31 ISBN: 978-1-368-07507-7
The slayer-witch and her Scoobies have more Big Bads to fight in this sequel to In Every Generation (2022).
Frankie Rosenberg is getting plenty of experience mixing her witch and slayer powers as more evil pops up (often from graves) in New Sunnydale. Demons of yore, back from Buffy's slaying days, are reappearing in droves, but the fate of Buffy herself after the explosion at slayerfest is still unknown. The Scoobies, a crew comprising teens introduced in the first book as well as some beloved characters from TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, are working on finding out what happened to the missing slayers when an oracle warns them "the darkness is coming." As if that wasn't enough to worry about, everyone is dealing with the ups and downs of romantic entanglements and the pressures of expectations from loved ones. This is clearly a midseries book that relies on knowledge from the previous story and ends with more of a reprieve than a resolution. Still, there's important development of the overarching plot as well as notable character growth that together make for a propulsive read. Like the show, this tale satisfyingly blends humor and lightheartedness with gruesome action, compelling mystery, and a dash of taboo romance. Frankie is cued White; there is some racial diversity and queerness among the Scoobies.
A captivating addition to the series that will leave fans clamoring for the next entry. (Paranormal. 14-adult)
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"Blake, Kendare: ONE GIRL IN ALL THE WORLD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A721918040/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=348f2146. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
In Every Generation.
By Kendare Blake.
Jan. 2022.400p. Disney/Hyperion, $18.99
(9781368075022). Gr. 8-10.
"In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer." Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer know this refrain well, and they will not be disappointed with horror writer Blake's take on the Slayer mythos. The next generation of Scoobies--Frankie Rosenberg and Jake Osbourne--are the focus here, and they all know what really happens in Sunnydale after dark. Joining them is Hailey, the sister of another Slayer, and they're all hoping to find their missing "Aunt Bufly" alive; if she's not, that means Frankie is the next Slayer, which is not a responsibility she wants. Lurking in the background is a mysterious vampire called the Countess, who seeks to reopen Sunnydale's Hellmouth and restore it to its former glory. If that's not enough, there's an Instagram challenge that's actually feeding off of the students at New Sunnydale High. No matter who the Slayer is, she's got a lot to deal with. This is a worthy successor to the Slayer stories and succeeds both as a love letter to existing fans and as a welcoming entry point for new readers. Blake has a great handle on the original characters and on the new Scoobies, too.--Stacey Comfort
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Comfort, Stacey. "In Every Generation." Booklist, vol. 118, no. 8, 15 Dec. 2021, p. 95. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A698156118/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=77c86167. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare IN EVERY GENERATION Disney-Hyperion (Teen None) $18.99 1, 25 ISBN: 978-1-368-07502-2
Sunnydale has a new slayer.
Set in the world of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this first installment in a new series focuses on a new generation. Frankie Rosenberg's mom is the powerful witch Willow, friend to famed slayer Buffy. Frankie's own minimal powers are mostly used for ecological purposes until there's an explosion at a slayers' meeting, leading Frankie to become the first ever slayer-witch. A slayer needs her crew of Scoobies, and under the guidance of Watcher Spike, Frankie is assisted by Hailey, half sister of missing slayer Vi; werewolf lacrosse player Jake; and Sigmund, a Sage demon. Frankie may be new to the gig, but she has to learn quickly because there's a new Big Bad in Sunnydale who is out for blood. The book provides enough information for patient newcomers to the Buffyverse to enjoy the story, but it will be most appealing to those with at least some background knowledge who will appreciate the references. Though the pacing is inconsistent, exciting action scenes abound, and the villain is intriguing and delightfully vicious. The characters' banter and observations are often cheeky and funny but sometimes fall flat, as when they are based on gender stereotypes. The abrupt ending satisfyingly wraps up some plots, but there are plenty left open for future entries. Most characters are White; Hailey's mom was Saulteaux First Nations, and Sigmund is Black.
Enjoyable for Buffy fans and general paranormal enthusiasts. (Paranormal. 14-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Blake, Kendare: IN EVERY GENERATION." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A682168350/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9bc2105f. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Kendare Blake. Disney-Hyperion, $18.99 (400p) ISBN 978-1-368-07502-2
Blake's (All These Bodies) trilogy opener set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe centers a new generation of Slayers. After a bombing at Slayerfest, "regular gatherings of all the remaining Slayers," decimates existing Slayers and leaves the fate of Buffy unknown, white teen Frankie Rosenberg--daughter to original Slayer Willow--finds her Slayer abilities awakening. When "lanky and pale" Slayer Vi Larsson disappears after the same event, her half sister Hailey, a 16-year-old of Canadian and Saulteaux First Nations descent, goes searching for answers. Hailey soon ends up in New Sunnydale as a part of a new Scooby Gang with Slayer Frankie and werewolf Jake Osbourne, where they try to solve the mystery of the bombing and the recent crop of vampires in town. The explanations of show references might feel clunky to fans, but readers new to the franchise will appreciate the additional context. Blake successfully employs quippy one-liners that capture the tone and humor of the original Buffyverse while bringing it to a modern era. Though the ending satisfactorily utilizes the show's "monster of the week" format, it also strikes an uneven balance with the greater mystery of who caused the Slayer explosion, in this entertaining addition to the Buffy canon. Ages 12-up. Agent: Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, Folio Literary. Jan.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
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"In Every Generation (In Every Generation #1)." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 45, 8 Nov. 2021, p. 70. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A683063526/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4c13eafc. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
All These Bodies. By Kendare Blake. Sept. 2021.304p. HarperlQuill Tree, $18.99 (9780062977168). Gr. 9-12.
It's the summer of 1958, and a string of strange murders have begun in the Midwest, baffling and terrifying those who live to hear about them. Not much links the victims except the way they die: their bodies drained of blood, the crime scenes clean. In Black Deer Falls, Minnesota, Michael Jensen, the sheriffs son, dreams of becoming a journalist, and when the killer attacks his neighbors, he may have the story of a lifetime. This murder is like all the others except for one crucial difference: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is at the scene, covered in blood, and she's willing to tell Michael her story. But the story she has to tell is strange, at times horrifying, and flecked with impossible details, and Michael may not want to hear the end. There's a blush of the supernatural here, but Blake (Three Dark Crowns, 2016) takes a sharp pivot out of dark fantasy for a dispassionate thriller, inspired by real murders, that reads like true crime. A chilling descent into the human psyche. --Maggie Reagan
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Reagan, Maggie. "All These Bodies." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 22, Aug. 2021, p. 63. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A689976859/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5633e26e. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare ALL THESE BODIES Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins (Teen None) $18.99 9, 21 ISBN: 978-0-06-297716-8
A “nobody from nowhere” gets the scoop of a lifetime.
A paperboy and aspiring journalist in 1959 Black Deer Falls, Minnesota, 17-year-old Michael Jensen’s heard about the previous summer’s killings known as the Bloodless Murders or Dracula Murders. The body count so far is 12 blood-drained corpses found across the Midwest. Then blood-drenched 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is discovered at the scene of the Carlson triple homicide in Michael’s hometown. Ultimately unknowable Marie—cast as something of a femme fatale in contrast to Michael’s bland, Everyman foil—doesn’t deny her involvement but won’t identify her much-mythologized accomplice. Infuriating an ambitious district attorney, the police, and national news reporters, Marie chooses to tell her slippery, shifting, and allegedly supernatural story solely to Michael. More of a sympathetic confessor than a callous interrogator, Michael works to tease out Marie’s motives even as his community and the world question his entanglement with the case. Although she inserts a supernatural element, Blake otherwise grounds the true-crime–style tale—which acknowledges the influence of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood—in real-life issues like domestic abuse, poverty, privilege, and sexism. Paradoxically, even as the book scrutinizes the darker human appetite for serial killers, criminal escapades, and vengeance, it caters to these same urges. The enigmatic ending might leave readers without resolution, but like Marie’s “truths,” the full story may never be known. Main characters read as White by default.
An insightful look at our morbid curiosity about murderers. (map, author’s note) (Thriller. 14-adult)
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"Blake, Kendare: ALL THESE BODIES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A668237669/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=305b137d. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
All These Bodies
Kendare Blake. Quill Tree, $18.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-297716-8
Through an assured voice and a vividly wrought small-town atmosphere, Blake (the Three Dark Crowns series) swiftly draws readers into this tense historical thriller inspired by a real-life murder spree. In the summer of 1958, the Bloodless Murders, dubbed for the string of human victims found drained of their blood, strikes fear in the Midwest. When the bodies of the Carlson family are discovered in Black Deer Falls, Minn., there's a break in the case in the form of Marie Catherine Hale, 15 and white, who's found covered in blood at the scene of the crime. As the public pressure for answers mounts, Marie--in custody at the local jail--will only speak with 17-year-old Michael Jensen, a white aspiring journalist who's also the sheriff's son. After she offers up an impossible-seeming explanation, truth-obsessed Michael must determine whether she's being honest or exploiting his trust in her. Though the duo's taut back-and-forth can feel repetitive, the prosecutor's push to try Marie in a state where she's eligible for the death penalty keeps the stakes high throughout this well-crafted mystery for fans of In Cold Blood and None Shall Sleep. Ages 14-up. Agent: Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, Foundry Literary + Media. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
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"All These Bodies." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 27, 5 July 2021, p. 72. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A668271372/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f0113eec. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
BLAKE, Kendare. All These Bodies. 304p. HarperCollins/Quill Tree. Sept. 2021. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9780062977168.
Gr 8 Up--Michael Jenson has always wanted to be a journalist. Over the course of the summer in 1958, Michael has followed what the newspapers have dubbed "the Bloodless Murders"--a string of violent murders across the Midwest where the victims have been found with every drop of blood drained from their bodies--and his daydreams of stumbling across a story this huge grow by the day. Then the unthinkable happens. Michael's small Minnesota town is rocked when the Carlson family is found murdered in their living room, drained of all their blood, with 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale found lingering in the next room, drenched in blood. Suddenly, Michael is thrust into the national spotlight when Marie insists that she will only tell her story to him. Blake based this story on the real-life murder spree of teenagers Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate and the murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. The protagonists are well-developed--timid, polite Michael and bold, headstrong Marie carry the story forward on their own. The scenes in which Marie is recounting the murders to Michael are easily the book's most riveting. Despite the fascinating inspiration and characterization, the novel overall suffers from uneven pacing and a repetitive narrative. However, readers may find the true crime aspect and vague supernatural layer thrilling enough to enjoy the book. VERDICT A quick murder mystery that may not satisfy hardcore thriller fans but will no doubt be extremely popular due to its macabre plot.--Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn P.L..
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Hixson, Tyler. "BLAKE, Kendare. All These Bodies." School Library Journal, vol. 67, no. 8, Aug. 2021, p. 86. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A670397976/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=792e707d. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
BLAKE, Kendare. One Dark Throne. 464p. HarperCollins/HarperTeen. Sept. 2017. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9780062385468. POP
Gr 8 Up--Following up on the events of Three Dark Crowns, Blake brings the queen triplets to their fates as they fight for their lives. While the teen queens deal with suitors and advisors, they must also grapple with the reality of their tasks in killing one another for the ultimate throne. When Katharine seems to gather strength, Mirabella and Arisonoe must determine whether they can work together or if they even should. The author takes the cursed sisters to new exciting heights with a driving plot. A continued detailed development of characters carves out unexpected alliances with Blake's careful manipulation. Readers will appreciate the epic payoff of the first novel in this second installment. The present-tense style throughout underlines the drama of the plot. The large cast of characters may seem overwhelming at times, but each is characterized skillfully. Though Blake describes some violence, the gore is minimal, making this appropriate for a broad range of ages. VERDICT Dark indeed, and exploring themes of loyalty, this is a thrilling sequel with everything from action to romance to entice readers. A strong purchase for YA fantasy shelves.--Abby Hargreaves, D.C. Public Library
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or In the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib. ed. Publisher's library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Hargreaves, Abby. "Blake, Kendare. One Dark Throne." School Library Journal, vol. 63, no. 8, Aug. 2017, p. 98. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499597885/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ffae9d59. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
One Dark Throne.
By Kendare Blake.
Sept. 2017.464p. HarperTeen, $18.99 (9780062385468); e-book, $18.99 (9780062385482). Gr. 9-12.
This Ascension Year has surprised the whole of the island of Fennbirn. Now 16, the three queens are locked in a battle to the death for their crown. Mirabella, the most powerful elemental in generations, should have decimated her weaker sisters by now, but she hesitates to attack. Meanwhile, Arsinoe, raised by naturalists who commune with plants and animals, has discovered she's not as powerless as she once appeared. But it's Katharine, the meek and almost ungifted poisoner, who has become ruthless after a brush with the dark, violent magic of the island, and the crown may be within her reach. But the families who raised the queens have their own agendas and are more than willing to tip the scales. This sequel to Three Dark Crowns (2016) loses none of that book's momentum, powering toward a conclusion that, though it works as a finale, also leaves several open doors. With wonderfully drawn characters and a lethal, unpredictable plot, this follow-up will leave readers breathless as the queens' fates unfold.--Maggie Reagan
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
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Reagan, Maggie. "One Dark Throne." Booklist, vol. 113, no. 21, 1 July 2017, pp. 50+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499862814/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0fac86ec. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare ONE DARK THRONE HarperTeen (Children's Fiction) $18.99 9, 19 ISBN: 978-0-06-238546-8
Three sisters intensify their deadly struggle for the crown in the second of a horror-tinged fantasy series. After the spectacular catastrophe of the Quickening (Three Dark Crowns, 2016), the balance of power among the queens has shifted. With the rampage by Arsinoe's bear, the naturalist candidate has demonstrated unexpected strength, and now elemental Mirabella is no longer treated as the foreordained victor. Meanwhile, poisoner Katharine has returned from her rumored death with a vengeance...and a mission. Alliances shift as the various factions play Temple against Council, and potential suitors become both rivals and pawns--but not even the Goddess can prevent the queens from deciding to take their fates into their own hands. Blake's already pitch-black tale shades even darker, as the queens' cruel contest piles up an escalating (and grisly) body count. Yet more excruciating is the curse upon their experience of love, whether with siblings, parents, or friends; in romance, passion, even religious devotion--all relationships are twisted, broken, abandoned, and betrayed. With numerous alternating viewpoints, the exquisitely restrained prose limns a nuanced, subtly realized matriarchal society: all-white, normatively heterosexual (but with exceptions), in which even the most complex male characters function only in relationship to women. The deliberate pacing at the outset serves to re-establish the labyrinthine web of characterization and plot, paying off in a tumultuous climax that piles one shocking twist upon another. Achingly gorgeous and gruesomely fascinating. (Fantasy. 14-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Blake, Kendare: ONE DARK THRONE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A498345004/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=850d4c02. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare. One Dark Throne: Three Dark Crowns, Book 2. HarperTeen, September 2017. 464p. $18.99. 978-0-06238546-8.
The Ascension Year has finally begun, and the triplet queens are trapped in a battle to the death. After her weaker sisters' impressive demonstrations at the Quickening, Mirabella is no longer the anticipated future queen despite being the strongest elemental queen in generations. Arsinoe, the giftless naturalist queen, must use all of her cunning to fool the island into thinking she possesses more power than she does or else the people that she loves will be in danger from the attacks of her sisters. It is Katharine, however, the once frail and timid poisoner queen, who is gaining a reputation as the most ruthless and dangerous. For the sisters, it is not just the power to rule that is at stake; only the winner will live.
One Dark Throne builds upon the momentum of Three Dark Crowns (HarperTeen, 2016), immersing readers into the lethal and suspenseful world of the three sisters. By writing in alternating perspectives, Blake skillfully guides readers through the complex chain of events of the Ascension Year while keeping her large cast of characters ignorant of each other's tactics and motivations. Though the body count continues to rise throughout the sinister plot, the violence is not graphic, and it subtly adds to the cruelty of the world in which the sisters live. Fans of Game of Thrones and dark fantasies will revel in this story of betrayal and survival.--Amanda Melilli.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Melilli, Amanda. "Blake, Kendare. One Dark Throne: Three Dark Crowns, Book 2." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 40, no. 4, Oct. 2017, pp. 69+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A511785069/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d208062d. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare TWO DARK REIGNS HarperTeen (Young Adult Fiction) $18.99 9, 4 ISBN: 978-0-06-268614-5
In the third entry in a pitch-black fantasy quartet, everyone acts with the best of intentions--and everything goes terribly, terribly wrong.
Katharine, newly Queen Crowned of Fennbirn, just wants a peaceful, prosperous reign, but the people fear her, the vengeful spirits strengthening her urge ever more dreadful deeds, and even the eldritch mist protecting the island has seemingly turned against its inhabitants. Jules Milone wishes only to learn more about her cursed legion gift, but the warriors and oracles insist she lead their rebellion, defying the prophecy that she may be the island's doom. Mirabella and Arsinoe try desperately to conform to the patriarchal culture of their mainland refuge, but visions of a centuries-gone Blue Queen demand their return. The barrage of intrigue, betrayals, spells, portents, and grisly violence unleashed in this volume almost overwhelms, as multiple viewpoints follow several intertwining plotlines, both epic and intimate, across present and past. Blake's (One Dark Throne, 2017, etc.) elegant, understated prose unfolds new facets of the island's culture, revealing sinister truths behind pious legends. The richly-drawn characters default to white and mostly heterosexual (although at least one culture celebrates bisexuality). Some take comfort in male lovers living or dead, but the narrative is mostly driven by the complicated relationships between strong, vibrant women: mothers and daughters, friends and rivals, Goddess and priestess, and--above all--sisters.
Tragic, devastating, horrifying, enthralling. (cast of characters, map) (Fantasy. 14 -adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Blake, Kendare: TWO DARK REIGNS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A549924023/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=65240d81. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Two Dark Reigns.
By Kendare Blake.
Sept. 2018.464p. HarperTeen, $18.99 (9780062686145). Gr. 9-12.
Against all odds, Arsinoe and Mirabella have escaped the island of Fennbirn and now struggle to do what no queen before ever has: live a normal life on the mainland. "That, however, is proving to be easier said than done. Though their powers wane as they're separated from the island, Arsinoe is having visions of the legendary Blue Queen--a rare fourth-born queen considered so blessed that her sisters were murdered at birth--and she is telling them, unmistakably, to go home. Meanwhile, on the island, Katharine is queen at last, but her reign is uneasy. And Jules Milone, who, as all of Fennbirn now knows is cursed with two powerful, magical gifts, is surprised to discover how many people support her. Revolution is coming, and it could shatter the island's foundation. This third series installment expands the world introduced in Three Dark Crowns (2016) and One Dark Throne (2017), and the stakes, if possible, are higher than ever. There's one more book to go, and the cliff-hanger ending makes it clear: this battle's only just begun.--Maggie Reagan
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: One Dark Throne hit number one on the NYT best-seller list, and demand was high enough to make this original duology a quartet. Fans will be ready to kill for this volume.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
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Reagan, Maggie. "Two Dark Reigns." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2018, pp. 110+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A554041290/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ea4d637f. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Blake, Kendare FIVE DARK FATES HarperTeen (Young Adult Fiction) $18.99 9, 3 ISBN: 978-0-06-268617-6
Four rival queens, civil war, vengeful ghosts, lethal mists, torture, madness…any happy ending seems very unlikely in this conclusion of a pitch-black fantasy quartet.
As Arsinoe turns to low magic in a frantic effort to cure Jules' legion curse, Mirabella abandons the rebel army for Katharine. But the dead queens possessing the Queen Crowned grow ever more bloodthirsty, and all Fennbirn Island may have to pay the cost. The earlier books assembled huge casts to wrangle and an enormous tangle of plot threads to tie off, so it's no surprise that even with its considerable heft, this tome feels a bit crowded and rushed. But if Blake (Two Dark Reigns, 2018, etc.) relies on a deus ex machina (or, more accurately, a dea ex caverna) to resolve otherwise intractable narrative knots, she does not stint on her characters: Each one is a complicated, sympathetic individual with intelligible motivations despite their often bloody deeds. As the story digs into the legendary history of Fennbirn's matriarchal culture--apparently default white but also intriguingly default female and explicitly not default heterosexual--it gains greater depth and richness. Yet this world remains harsh, dark, and graphically violent, filled with impossible choices and dreadful sacrifices; As everyone fights, betrays, or tries to flee, all are inevitably drawn to the climactic clash that leaves no one unscathed.
Things may not end happily ever after, but they do end just right. (cast of characters, map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)
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"Blake, Kendare: FIVE DARK FATES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A591279167/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=617bd0ea. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Five Dark Fates.
By Kendare Blake.
Sept. 2019.464p. Harper-Teen, $18.99 (9780062686176). Gr. 9-12.
The fight for the throne of Fennbirn began, as it always has, with three queens. It was supposed to end with one. Instead, there are now four: Katharine, the Queen Crowned, has become preternaturally gifted, having absorbed the essences of the island's dead queens. Her sisters Mirabella, the powerful elemental, and Arsinoe, raised a naturalist but born a poisoner, have returned to Fennbirn after living on the mainland, guided by Arsinoe's mystical visions. And Jules Milone, not of royal blood but blessed--or cursed--with both naturalist and war gifts, is surrounded by fervent supporters who would make her a queen. As the fates of the four girls collide, the fate of the very island itself, and the magic that made it, will be determined. This fourth and final series installment brings the story of the queens of Fennbirn to a bittersweet--and suitably dark--close. This is a fully realized series with notable world building throughout; as it comes to its end, that magic lingers. Whichever queen readers were rooting for, it will be hard to say goodbye.--Maggie Reagan
HIGH-DEMAND BACKST0RY: Demand for the first two volumes in this set turned a planned duology into a quartet; as the final volume arrives, readers will be hungry for the end.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Reagan, Maggie. "Five Dark Fates." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 21, 1 July 2019, p. 63. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A595705169/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a245df94. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.