Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to win the contest (I came in third place!), but at least I finished with three novels that I was really excited about. Being both a geek and a chronic overachiever, I knew I had to give it a shot, so I ended up writing the drafts of three novels instead of one. It was 2008 and I had heard about a contest in which the Seattle-area writer who clocked in with the most words during November would win a walk-on role in an upcoming episode of Star Trek. Actually, they were all drafted out during a single NaNoWriMo.

The first three books in The Lunar Chronicles ( Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress) all started life as NaNoWriMo novels. What’s the connection between NaNoWriMo and Cinder? Book 2: Scarlet, based on Little Red Riding Hood, will be out in January. Her reputation brings the handsome Prince Kai to her booth one day, and soon Cinder is caught in a political battle of wills between Earth and the Lunars-an evolved species of humans who live on the moon and have developed powers of mind-control and manipulation.Ĭinder is the first of what will be a four-book series called The Lunar Chronicles, each of which is inspired by a different fairy tale.

In a world where cyborgs are considered second-class citizens, Cinder earns her keep in her stepmother’s household by working as a mechanic at the weekly market. Our heroine, Cinder, is a sixteen-year-old cyborg, meaning she’s part-human and part-machine. Of course! Cinder is a retelling of the classic Cinderella story, but with a science-fiction twist. We are thrilled to introduce Marissa Meyer, long-time Wrimo and YA fiction writer, who joins us to talk about her debut novel, Cinder, which came out in January from Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan.

Marissa meyer cinder