isaacmarionsbigwords

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Hey everyone. I have moved to a remote island far away from the world and have also moved most of my online operations over to my Patreon. We’ve got a wonderfully active fan community developing over there with a private chat room and various livestreams and readings as well as lots of obscure Warm Bodies content—deleted scenes, movie set photos and stories, etc. If you still give any shit about me and my projects, that’s where it’s all happening now.

Most of the good stuff requires some level of patronage, because crowdfunding is the only way I’m going to survive long enough to write the next book. But I also do a lot of free public posts.

I’m going to leave my Tumblr active since I linked to it in my books, but this will be my last post here. See you over there!

patreon.com/isaacmarion

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I just finished The Living, and it was absolutely beautiful. You have a true mastery of words. Thank you for an incredible ending to a magnificent story.

I might be done with Tumblr but I want to respond to this so that my last post isn’t that boring thing about the UT-AZ Sovereignty...

Thank you for:

1. Having enough spark inside you to look me up and learn that there were more books beyond Warm Bodies

2. Reading them

3. Sending me this lovely note.

4. Having a “Gleam eye” as your profile pic.

I have about 700 copies of The Burning World and about 800 of The Living that I need to sell, and when that’s done, I will move on and speak of Warm Bodies no more. Thank you for staying with me to the end.

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What's UT-AZ Internment? It was mentioned in The Burning World and The Living.

I assume you mean UT-AZ Sovereignty? It’s one of the many seceded pseudo-nations that formed in the wake of the government’s collapse. A merger of Utah and Arizona that’s essentially a theocracy, completely insular and surrounded by a border fence so we don’t hear much about what goes on in there, though as we see in The Living, young people have started to cut holes in the fence and make a run for it...

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Curious Cat?

Does anyone have any thoughts on Curious Cat? I’ve been thinking about moving my operations over there for reader questions and interactions, but honestly I’m not sure if it does anything that Tumblr’s ask function doesn’t already do. Thoughts?

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Is anyone else repulsed by this new oily dark blue background color? It’s maddeningly close to black but just blue enough to clash with the colors in other posts. Bring back the classic, quiet gloom of Depression Blue!

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About my Nora in Ethiopia question. I can't find the part about her grandmother's picture, sadly. But since I feel like a moron now, I want to ask a another question about New Hunger. What was the deal with M's Boney girlfriend? I want to hear more about her. She was a very interesting character, despite no lines.

We learn all we’re going to learn about her in The Living. M isn’t exactly eager to relive that era of his life. He’s moving on.

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In Warm Bodies, Nora said she never been to Ethiopia. In New Hunger, one of her sections says she was at Ethiopia before. Is this because she was lying in WB, because she wanted to be separated from her past?

I think you misread something. There’s a part where she thinks about a photo she saw of her grandmother in Ethiopia, but that’s as close as she gets. Maybe you’re thinking of “Little Ethiopia,” which is the neighborhood in Washington DC where she grew up?

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Let’s move.

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I feel like your holding my book hostage

I have negotiated its release. I am meeting the terrorists tomorrow to pay its ransom and bring it home to you.

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Are there gonna be any explicit/obvious spoliers for The Living in your blog? I'm getting the book probably until Christmas and I don't wanna ruin such a great story like that

I will respond to spoilery questions but only if they put SPOILERS FOR THE LIVING at the top of the question because if I put it in my answer it arrives too late!

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NSFW

Even the term NSFW itself pisses me off. This is the metric by which we’re judging all art, whether it’s “safe” for mainstream America’s miserable notion of “work”—which is of course a dystopian cubicle farm run by mindless HR drones who would choke at the sight of a female-presenting nipple. The term “NSFW” overlays every piece of art with the image of some office worker viewing it in their cubicle while the boss looks over their shoulder and we are all being forced to adapt our lifestyles to appease that poor drone’s imaginary boss. I’m furious.

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Soooo we’re all leaving this site, right? This has to be the last straw, right? Where’s the new frontier?

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Hello Isaac, huge fans of your books, they're amazing ^^ I know, you recently finished & published The Burning World, but I'm curious to ask when you're going to work on the final book? I'm really eager to read it! You are in fact one of your favorite authors.

Hmm, you’re right, I really should get to work on that final book...hold on a second...ok, finished! 

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i don't know the rules for authors reading fanfiction of their own books, but how do you feel knowing its out there? do you think it's cool that people love your books enough to write their own content, or is it weird to think about?

The fact that so many people ask me how I feel about this suggests that some authors disapprove of it, which is very strange to me. I can’t really imagine why this would be anything but flattering. I can’t actually read Warm Bodies fanfic, it’s too weird for me to hear my characters speaking in someone else’s voice, it’s like close friends of mine have been possessed by bodysnatchers, but I love that it’s out there. It’s a huge honor.

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if you ever find yourself in the south, please do a meetup! i have so much love and praise for your books and typing it out doesn't seem to do it justice, i'd love to say everything in person

I just did two events in Alabama. Two people came to the bookstore signing...literally no one came to the convention event, so I didn’t even do my presentation! Lol.

But thanks?

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How do you deal with being a creator and feeling depression? I’m stuck in this rut where I can’t seem to get anything out and it’s like this awful cycle and I don’t know how to crawl out of it...

Depression comes and goes like seasons for me and I’m more or less helpless to stop it. Usually how it works for me is I start sinking, and I sink deeper and deeper over the course of days or weeks (usually not months, thank God) and then I reach a rock bottom where I literally can’t get out of bed and I feel like I’m in a massive press that’s crushing me like a pile of grapes and juicing sadness out of me and I’m lying there in this puddle of miserable mush—and then there’s this turning point where the sadness is so extreme and ridiculous and disgusting that it PISSES ME OFF. And I get angry, outraged that this thing is trying to steal my life away, and my depression becomes a despotic authority figure that I want to rebel against, and so even though in that moment nothing in life sounds good or appealing and I basically have no reason to live, I DO have the anger, so I let the anger inflate me and lift me out of bed to go fight a rebellion against my own dystopian brain, so I fling myself out into the world and do something drastic like exercise or just going for a walk outside, and when the anger subsides I find that the worst has passed and I’m on the upswing now.

Yes, it’s still an awful cycle, but there’s one way I’ve found to crawl out of it.