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Mary E. Pearson

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Fiction and Excerpts [2]
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Fiction and Excerpts [2]

The Kiss of Deception (Excerpt)

Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:00pm
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, || In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia's life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn't—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

How Did You Come Up With That?: Bygone Worlds as Springboards to Fantasy

Tue Jul 8, 2014 5:00pm 8 comments Favorite This
Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. Photo by Wikimedia user Fcb981

When I was in fifth grade I had to do a social studies report on the Mayans. As a ten year-old my report, of course, included a hand-drawn map of the Yucatan peninsula, descriptions of Mayan architecture, government and money, religious practices, food and farming, their calendar, and maybe if I was lucky, I ripped a few pages out of a National Geographic with some pretty colorful pictures of their ruins being eaten up by the jungle. (Sacrilege, I know…)

It’s been a long time since I did that report and I can’t remember every detail about the Mayans, but I do remember one thing: my research couldn’t tell me what happened to them. It was a mystery which delighted my ten year-old self. It seemed that they had simply vanished off the face of the earth. There were even delicious musings that the Mayans had been aliens, and beamed up to their mother ship because they were done with Earth. An advanced civilization, pfft. Gone.

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The Kiss of Deception (Excerpt)

Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:00pm 1 comment Favorite This

Read an excerpt from The Kiss of Deception, the first book in Mary E. Pearson’s Remnant Chronicles, available July 8th from Henry Holt & Co.

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.

amazon buy button the kiss of deception

[Read an Excerpt]

The Rotten Beast

Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:00am 9 comments Favorite This

Presenting a new original science fiction story, “The Rotten Beast,” by author Mary E. Pearson, which takes place in the same near-future world of The Jenna Fox Chronicles.

In “The Rotten Beast,” a sixteen-year-old girl named Allys, living in a near future version of the U.S., is vehemently opposed to the way scientists are meddling with human and artificial life. In fact, she blames such scientific overreaching for the illness which is killing her. When she awakens one day to find that her parents have gone against her wishes and had an illegal operation performed to save her life and restore her body, she is furious and must come to terms with this new chance at life, which she didn’t ask for and didn’t think she wanted.

[Read “The Rotten Beast”]

Series: YA on Tor.com

The Sexy Unsung Hero

Mon Sep 28, 2009 11:54am 10 comments Favorite This

Characters? Everybody loves them. They sweep on stage, grab your attention, and demand the spotlight.

Plot? It’s right up there with character, stealing the show, swishing around with twists and turns, dipping, soaring, and making you zip through the pages.

But the silent partner in the performance, the floorboards, the rafters, and even the music that makes plot and character shine is the one I want to talk about today. The silent partner doesn’t get to take a lot of bows or many times even take any credit, but without it, character and plot would trip all over their feet, fall flat, forget their lines, and say stupid things.  Heck, they would stop breathing altogether.

The humble partner I am talking about is

setting.

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The Bones of Inspiration

Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:41pm 6 comments Favorite This

You know, I am probably certifiably NUTS to choose this topic, but it’s the question that writers are asked—hands down—more than any other. What inspired your story?

Most writers I know, including myself, absolutely dread the “inspiration” question. More than dread it. They secretly melt inside at the thought of retracing the path that led to the story.

And yet, the wicked irony is, that’s exactly what I’m always curious to know too. When I’ve read a book that I love, I want to know! How did the author do this? Let me inside your head! How did this story come to be?

Stephen King calls stories found things, “like fossils in the ground.” This analogy works well with the way I write.

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Bells, Whistles, & Books: Going Paperless

Fri Sep 18, 2009 2:41pm 34 comments Favorite This

Speaking of disbelief, several days ago I read about the New England high school that was going bookless in their library. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.  You can read the article here. My first reaction, probably like a lot of people, was shock. A library without books?

Of course, they will have electronic books, a few anyway, so that is something, but they are clearing out their 20,000 book collection to “improve” their library.

Okay.

I am going to try to avoid my knee-jerk reaction (!) look at it from all sides, and play devil’s advocate.

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What YA Lit is and isn’t

Thu Sep 10, 2009 5:05pm 50 comments Favorite This

This past year I’ve met with a lot of book clubs, several of which were adult book clubs. Many were surprised that The Adoration of Jenna Fox was a teen book. They had never read a teen book before—at least not since their own teen years. They didn’t really know what YA fiction was. They are not alone. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about young adult literature. Who writes it? Why do they write it? Who should read it? Who shouldn’t? What are the author’s responsibilities? What should their responsibilities be? What is YA lit? What is it not? Is it “safe” literature? Being a YA writer, all these questions make me feel almost subversive at times.

Can you imagine having these same suspicions, er, I mean, questions about any other kind of literature? Adult books for instance.

Why do those writers write stories about adults?
Science fiction? Shouldn’t those adults grow up and read real fiction?
Hemingway is just watered-down fiction when adults should be moving on to complex stuff like Kafka and Tolstoy.
Do adults really need to read McCarthy when we have Dickens? It was good enough for our grandparents.

(Or fill in the author substitutions of your choice.)

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Obsessed with the Future

Thu Sep 3, 2009 1:09pm 4 comments Favorite This

Let’s face it. We are all obsessed with the future. Everyone. Live for the moment? Bah!

Whether we read science fiction or not, there is not an hour that goes by that we don’t dwell in some way on the future. Maybe it is our survival gene. My stomach is growling. What will I have for lunch? What should I have for lunch? Do I want to fit into that skirt for the reunion in two weeks? Will the doctor be able to see that I had a BLT when she checks my cholesterol in three days? Will the cottage cheese that I really should eat be good beyond its expiration date?

Or maybe our sights project a little farther. I could save money if I ate in and put that money away for a vacation or retirement. What the heck, I might get hit by a car in five years and then will it really matter that I had one little BLT?

Or maybe still farther out.  Someday someone will invent a BLT that is good for you.

Bingo.

Like anyone else, I have my daily moments of wondering about the future. But one day . . .

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Jumping In

Tue Sep 1, 2009 3:56pm 8 comments Favorite This

I was pretty excited when Tor invited me to blog over here. I’m the new kid on the block, with only one science fiction book to my name, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, which came out last year, and one sort of fantasy book, The Miles Between, that just came out this month. I say “sort of” because even in their review, Kirkus wasn’t sure what genre it fit into. The Miles Between does have an element of fantasy, more along the lines of slipstream or magical realism, a certain surreal quality, but it is not full-blown fantasy. It will be interesting for me to see how it is categorized. I am usually surprised.

Genre classifications can do that to me, because most books, including my own, seem to be part of many worlds. I don’t think about genre as I write. I am thinking about the character, their world, and probably the pickle they are in and I’m trying to understand what they are thinking and feeling, and heck, what are they going to do next? Usually I feel more like an observer watching a story unfold than the person pulling the strings trying to make it fit into one genre or another, and I am quickly trying to transcribe what I am seeing and hearing. It is almost an out-of-body experience . Hm, does that make the writing process itself, sci-fi? Could be.

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