(Order ithere.)
My freshman year of college,The Hunger Gamesmovie adaptation came out and I was really excited about it.
This was maybe 2011.
Credit: Elena Seibert
I loved it, but there was a lot of hateful backlash against the black characters in the film.
People were like, Oh, whyd they make all the good characters black?
Just really, really awful and hateful things.
Macmillan Children’s
That became my writing mission.
Then I was really inspired after reading books likeShadowshaperby Jose Older andAn Ember in the Ashesby Sabaa Tahir.
I dont know if thats too many vague words.
It was because I never saw myself.
When you see blackness in a sacred way, that means something.
That makes you feel a certain way, whether youre black or not.
I knew I wanted to do something with it; I just didnt have the story idea.
I kept showing people at work and they were like, Oh, did you draw this?
and Im like, No!
I just bought it on the internet, isnt it amazing?
Everyones like, Okay, lets go back to work now.
Is that cool, is that interesting?
Hes like, That sounds cool, and Im like, Im going to run with it.
From there it was an explosion.
My first draft of my first book took me like a year.
My first draft ofChildren of Blood and Bonetook a month.
We submitted the book and that was pretty crazy.
I ended up with Macmillan.
And then weve been revising since April …
It was like 18 straight months of really intense writing and revising.
Im still a little delirious.
Its been aggressive and its been accelerated, but its also been so much work.
A lot of people dont realize writing is really just rewriting.
The final book is probably somewhere between draft 30 and draft 40.
Its been through a lot.
Im so happy with it, but Im also so ready to sleep for two straight weeks.
When in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy.
Its just been rewritten 100 times.
Thats how you actually get to the place where youre like, This is so shiny and beautiful.
I love when its pure inspiration, which is how I like to approach it.
Like I said with this book, Ive been working on it straight for 18 months.
So I really enjoy that first month or two when you really are just creating a world from scratch.
Then I think you do everything you want to do.
Then you go from there, like, I want them to wear these headdresses and stuff.
For me, its all the fun stuff, all the Pinterest board.
At first its all fun and then its adding real-world parallels to it.
I wanted to portray that.
For me it was important to show skin bleaching.
Thats what its about.
This is a book that doesnt have white people; therefore they wont be skin bleaching.
But skin bleaching does not make sense in our world.
People have been fighting that battle for a long time.
Luckily I didnt have to go into this book citing that fight.
Both areNew York Timesbest-sellers.
They knocked down the door and proved that people want these stories.
I feel very fortunate to be trying to get published with these stories during this time period.
Whats the feeling around this book being in the works for adaptation?Im still trying to process it.
I mean, its a movie!
I watch trailers all the time.
To think that Im going to see what I wrote on a screen blows my mind.
And Im like, I have a crush on John Boyega what if hes in the movie?
Then I can meet John Boyega!
Im finally a little bit closer to processing it than I have been in the past.
