I’d been interested in the Nephilim since I was a little girl and read Madeleine L’Engle’s book Many Waters, in which the main characters travel back to the time of Noah where there are angels walking around on earth, and some of the angels have children by human women. I kept mulling over the word “hero,” and then, in one of those freakish writerly flashes of inspiration, I remembered this one obscure little passage in the Bible that talked about heroes-the Nephilim, the offspring of angels and humans. I wanted her to be a high school girl who gets completely tongue-tied around the boy she likes. I wanted her to have some unique problems, sure, but I also wanted her to have very normal, human problems. I didn’t want her to be a vampire or a fairy or any other kind of wholly supernatural creature-even though I love reading those books don’t get me wrong. But I also knew I wanted her to be human. First off, I knew that I wanted Clara to be special I wanted her to be a modern-day, bona fide hero. Now all I had left to do was think of the why.

So suddenly I had the who, the what, the where, and the when. With the forest fire came the setting of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and with the setting came the character of Tucker, this other, more rough-and-tumble boy who captures Clara’s attention and complicates everything beautifully. Then I lit on this fantastic image of a forest fire, and once I had that, the story began to unroll itself. ) So I started to hear Clara’s voice, and she began to tell me about this mission that she was on. It’s worked out pretty well for me so far. Call me crazy, but I can accept that kind of craziness. (For the record, usually in life it’s not a good sign when you’re hearing voices, but as a writer that’s how it usually first comes to me, a voice that wants to tell a story.

The seed that became Unearthly was always Clara-I clearly started to hear the voice of this character, this girl who knew that it was her destiny to save a boy who she kept seeing in visions. Why did I choose to write about angels? This is a question I get a lot these days, and I always feel a little funny answering it, because the truth is, there was never a clear, definitive moment where I said to myself, “you know what? I’m going to write about angels!” It just sort of came about organically.

What was it about angels that grabbed you as opposed to witches, warlocks, vamps etc?īrace yourself: I have a long answer for this one: Debuting Author Cynthia Hand wants to get the word out about about her first book Unearthly, along with give us a little insight in to her life.

Unearthly book series