Classandra Clare is a notable American young adult novel writer. She is famous for her paranormal YA series The Mortal Instruments. She earned numerous awards and prizes for her debut novel.
Clare was born as Judith Rumelt on July 27, 1973 to American Jewish parents, Elizabeth and Richard Rumelt, in Tehran, Iran. Her parents are writer and business school professor professionally. Clare travelled a lot as a child with her family, trekking Himalayas and living shortly in England, Switzerland and France. Due to her family’s customary recurring travels, Clare found stability in reading books. She returned to Los Angles to attend high school where she developed a keen interest in writing amusing stories. Inspired by Jane Austen’s The Beautiful Cassandra, a short story, she produced a novel with the same title. Later that name served as her pseudonym in her literary works.
After majoring in English, Clare started off her career as a reporter at a number of established entertainment magazine and tabloids like The Hollywood Reporter. She used to write fan fictions before she took on serious writing projects. Her fan fiction The Very Secret Diaries inspired by The Lord of the Rings and The Draco Trilogy by Harry Potter became popular among fans of the series. Clare also contributed to a Baen anthology of humor fantasy with a short story The Girl’s Guide to Defeating the Dark Lord, which marked as her first publication. She wrote short stories for other anthologies, as well, by the name Magic in the Mirrorstone and So Fey.
Clare started off her serious writing career in 2004 with City of Bones being the first installment in The Mortal Instruments series. Inspired by the urban landscape of Manhattan, she brought the mythologies to life in the modern New York City. City of Bones is about a young girl Clary Fray who is unaware of the existence of supernatural creatures and her significant role in their world. She founds out the hard way as her mother goes missing and a Shadowhunter Jace Wayland saves her life from demons sent by Valentine, Downworlders’ enemy. Clare has incorporated a number of mythological elements and supernatural creatures. These supernatural beings include Shadowhunter (those who fight Downworlders), werewolves, faeries, vampires and warlocks etc.
The first book in the series instantly topped the New York Times bestseller list and paved way for the next two installments, City of Ashes (2008) and City of Glass (2009). The second cycle of The Mortal Instruments also contains three installments with a different plotline. The book garnered several awards in YA literature, including American Library Association Teens Top Ten Award (2008), Georgia Peach Book Awards for Teen Readers, and The 2010 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award among others. Moreover, City of Bones is adapted into a major motion picture in 2013.
The success of The Mortal Instruments encouraged Clare to expand the Shadowhunter and Downworlder’s universe experience. She began working on a different project The Infernal Devices in the same cosmos of supernatural elements but set in Victorian era. Clockwork Angel is the first book in the series with the first-person narrative. The central character Tessa Gray relates her story of being kidnapped by the Downworlder’s who are on the verge of attaining utmost power. Once again Cassandra Clare succeed to capture interest of YA readers and her work stood no.1 at New York Times best-selling list.
Buy Books by Cassandra Clare
