Leah, what was your inspiration for writing DEATH MARKED?
All the first readers (including my editor) who loved Death Sworn and wanted to know when the sequel would be done.
How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?
I started sending my first full-length book manuscript to editors when I was about 17. I collected rejections from pretty much every imprint in existence. Over the next five manuscripts, I slowly graduated from form rejections, to “not this one, but send us your next one” rejections, to personal regretful rejections explaining in length why this manuscript wasn’t a good fit, to revision requests, to rejections that came from the acquisitions committee rather than the editor. Finally, a mere fifteen years after my first submission, I got an offer to publish Mistwood.
What’s your writing ritual like?
I don’t have much of a ritual — I try to fit in writing whenever and wherever I can. Things go best when I’m outdoors; second best is if I’m in my favorite cafe/breakfast spot early in the morning. I don’t listen to music when I write, though I do when I edit.
What are you working on now?
A new fantasy duology and a stand-alone fantasy that’s a little different from my usual fare (I like working on more than one thing at once). I’m super-excited about both of them, but I probably shouldn’t talk about them until I find out if I can sell them!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Death Marked
by Leah Cypess
Hardcover
Greenwillow Books
Released 3/3/2015
A young sorceress’s entire life has been shaped to destroy the empire controlling her world. But if everything she knows is a lie, will she even want to fulfill her destiny? The sequel to Death Sworn is just as full of magic and surprising revelations, and will thrill fans of Leigh Bardugo and Robin LaFevers.
At seventeen, Ileni lost her magical power and was exiled to the hidden caves of the assassins. She never thought she would survive long. But she discovered she was always meant to end up, powerless, in the caves as part of an elder sorcerer’s plan to destroy the evil Empire they’d battled so long. Except that Ileni is not an assassin, and she doesn’t want to be a weapon. And, after everything, she’s not even sure she knows the truth. Now, at the very heart of the Empire—its academy for sorcerers—the truth is what she seeks. What she finds challenges every belief she holds dear—and it threatens her fledgling romance with the young master of assassins.
Leah Cypess spins an intricate and beautiful conclusion to Ileni’s story. In the end, it may not be the epic decisions that bring down an empire, but the small ones that pierce the heart.
Purchase Death Marked at Amazon
Purchase Death Marked at IndieBound
View Death Marked on Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leah Cypess wrote her first story in first grade. The narrator was an ice-cream cone in the process of being eaten. In fourth grade, she wrote her first book, about a girl who was shipwrecked on a desert island with her faithful and heroic dog (a rip-off of both The Black Stallion and all the Lassie movies).
After selling her first story while in high school, she gave in to her mother’s importuning to be practical and majored in biology at Brooklyn College. She then went to Columbia Law School and practiced law for almost two years. She kept writing and submitting in her spare time, and finally, a mere 15 years after her first short story acceptance, she sold her first novel.
Leah currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and children.
