There are several scenes in Ninth House that echo current crises plaguing college campuses, like sexual violence. I do not know anyone who has lived without that experience - of being that person who was not taken seriously or who has to shout the loudest and then is criticized for shouting. I don’t think it’s any kind of revelation to say that Alex’s experiences in seeing ghosts and her experiences with the other side of the veil are really a metaphor for women not being listened to or believed. Do you have moments in your life where you face similar frustrations? In the book, Alex sometimes struggles to be taken seriously. You may have gotten a hundred high fives that day, but what you remember is the punch. The thing I always think about is that it’s kind of like walking down a hallway and everyone is high-fiving you and then one person just hauls up and punches you in the face. The truth is unless you have a remarkably thick skin, as a creator, it’s a very difficult place to be. My relationship with Twitter has evolved as my career has changed. Does that come naturally to you or is it something you have to work at? For YA authors in particular, Twitter seems especially important for connecting with readers. One language you have mastered is that of Twitter. I was proficient, but certainly not fluent. Also being from Southern California and having a limited range of knowledge about the world when I came to Yale. There’s a lot of that person who has found herself in a place where there’s tremendous opportunity, but possibly opportunity that I was not equipped for. But, if I am honest, there was another side to that, and you cannot write a story about an institution like Yale without exploring the ideas of privilege and class and gender and race, and you cannot write a story about magic, which is essentially going to operate as a commodity, without exploring the kind of damage that we could do to each other if this were actually in play. I had a very good experience in my society and I had a very good experience at Yale. I wanted to examine the idea of the kind of power that is hard to name - you can say that it’s the power of wealth, and to a certain extent it is, or you could say it’s the power of connection, and to a certain extent it is, but there is a kind of additional power that exists in these places and that does operate almost like magic. When people write about secret societies, there is a desire to demystify them. How much did your own experience inform the book? I would use scents of pine and mulled wine to try to bring myself back to the idea of being cold. Sometimes, I’ll admit, too - and I’m hesitant to talk about this because I think it sounds a little flaky - but I used scent to leave Southern California and feel like I was back in the winter. Music is a way I’m also guided into a story - the track I used to get me into the world of Ninth House is called “Walk” by Ludovico Einaudi. I’ve been living with the dream of this book and the mysteries of these places for a really long time. I’m always the kid who is going to be finding out if there is a cemetery or an abandoned amusement park that I can go visit as opposed to the beach, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to get me to the world of Ninth House. How do you get into the right mindset to sit down and write such dark material? In Ninth House, there are gruesome depictions of violence, its aftermath and dead bodies. The more I peeled back the layers, the more I discovered, and so it wasn’t really a difficulty so much as it was a different kind of exploration than what I had done in writing secondary world fantasy. ![]() It has this extraordinary history full of strange stories and mysteries. However, I was very lucky, because as it turns out New Haven is a city that rewards the people who get to know it. ![]() There were certainly inconveniences of distance and understanding the map of New Haven that came into play. It is a challenge to write in the real world once you’ve had the advantage of being able to create your own world.
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