>> Megan Labrise: Hi, everybody,
and welcome.
We are in conversation
with Holly Black
about her latest book,
“Book of Night.”
So if you are here, I assure you
whether you intended
to be or not, you're
in the right place.
This is going to be a fun
45 minutes, I promise you.
So I've got a little 
introduction here for a woman
who really needs 
no introduction.
Holly Black is the
New York Times bestselling
and award-winning author
of speculative
and fantasy novels,
short stories and comics.
She has sold over 26 million
books worldwide.
[applause]
>> Holly Black: So thank you
for buying them.
[laughter]
>> Megan Labrise: And her work has
been translated
into over 30 languages
and adapted for film.
Holly Black has been the
recipient of
the Mythopoeic Award.
>> Holly Black: Mythopoeic.
>> Megan Labrise: Mythopoeic
 Award.
Oh, I think I just said
 an eye disease.
I'm sorry.
Mythopoeic Award.
A Nebula --
I got that one --
and a Newbery honor.
She lives in New England
with her husband
and son in a house
 with a secret library.
So today, as I said, we're
here to discuss
her adult fiction debut,
“Book of Night” a dark,
modern fantasy full of crime,
betrayal and magicians who
can manipulate shadows.
At the center of the action
is Charlie Hall,
a veteran thief and con artist
who specializes
in stealing magical documents.
And when we meet her,
she's working as a bartender,
trying to keep her nose clean
and her head down.
She's living with her sister
and a new boyfriend
who may not have a shadow
but he does have a job.
So that's a plus.
But in other words
she's laying low
and trying to escape her past.
But what are the odds of that?
That would be a short story.
And as you see here,
we have a full novel
and it's fun, funny
dark, exciting.
It's a magnificent ride.
Lucky for us.
>> Holly Black: Wow.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. 
That's so good.
I wish I gave a
summary that help.
[laughter]
>> Megan Labrise: Well, 
that's what I do.
Oh, yeah, that's me. 
I'm Megan Labrise.
I'm the editor at large
for Kirkus Reviews.
I host a weekly podcast
called Fully Booked,
where I interview authors
and Kirkus’ editors
give weekly reading
recommendations.
You can find it on iTunes,
Spotify, and recently
on YouTube, you see my
big face on a microphone.
And after hours,
I'm the president of
the National Book
Critics Circle,
and I live in the Hudson River
Valley with my partner and cat
in a purple Victorian house
that's probably haunted.
So without further ado,
one more time,
round of applause, please
welcome Holly Black.
[applause]
>> Holly Black: Let's have fun.
>> Megan Labrise: All right.
Let’s do this.
So you have an origin
story for this novel.
>> Holly Black: I do.
>> Megan Labrise: Would you
be so kind as
to share it with us today?
>> Holly Black: Okay.
So long about 2017,
I had my ears surgically pointed.
You can see them.
>> Megan Labrise: Yeah.
Okay, by a guy whose name is
Samppa Von Cyborg,
and he travels the world
pointing people's ears.
It is all true.
[laughter]
So I wanted it done
by somebody
who knew what they
were doing.
>> Megan Labrise: Yes.
>> Holly Black: So I --
I don’t know how to say this.
So I went and figured
out he was going
to be, I think, in Baltimore.
And so I drove down to
get my ears pointed.
As I come in person in
front of me, he tells me,
was living as a vampire.
And I guess I was feeling
a little like weird
because this was really
my first big --
this is my first body
modification.
Went fully all the way past
I don't know, navel piercing,
like fully all the way to
like, ear modification.
And so I said, Oh, yes.
living as a vampire,
it's a young man's game.
[laughter]
And he said, no, no and all of a
sudden the guy said he was 50.
but he looked much younger.
[laughter]
And as I lay there on the table,
I thought,
this is such a fascinating job,
like traveling the world,
modifying people's ears.
And I thought, what
would it be like
to modify people's shadows?
And that was the first time
I really thought about
the idea that it
would become “Book of Night”.
It had two other moments.
One was many years ago when
I was doing Faerie research,
I came across a story.
There's a woman who
fell asleep on a hill,
and when she woke up,
there was a little man crouched
over her with scissors and
he was partway through,
cutting away her shadow.
And she jumped up
and he ran off.
And she was left with this
feeling that if she
hadn't chased him off and she
had lost her shadows,
something terrible that
she couldn't explain
would have happened.
And then I have a
nine-year-old, and I guess
he probably was seven
around the time that's happened.
But I looked close to town
and we walked into town
and we were
walking back and
he was watching
his shadow.
And he was just so fascinated
with the way as
we pass different lights,
it would bifurcate,
it would get longer,
it would get shorter.
And I thought
this is a kind of magic
we all have a feeling about,
like we all look at
our shadows and think,
huh, weird.
[laughter]
What's it doing?
Why does it do that?
We understand that it's
the light, but it doesn't
look quite like it's only
the light.
And so I think those are the
three things that came
together to make me really
want to write “Book of Night”.
So that's the origin story,
mostly about my ears.
>> Megan Labrise: Cool.
Yeah.
Which looked beautiful
by the way.
>> Holly Black: I put my hair up
so you guys can.
>> Megan Labrise: Thank you, 
yeah.
I remember those years of
being fascinated
by your shadow walking home.
There were the same years
where I used to
think when I was a kid
that the moon
followed me wherever I went.
You know, it's been a long time,
but I like to get some of
that magic back
reading your book.
So can we talk a little bit
more in this world,
the people who are --
these magical people,
these people who are able
to manipulate shadows,
theirs and others are
called gloamists.
>> Holly Black: Mm hmm.
>> Megan Labrise: A little bit 
about that, please.
>> Holly Black: So, I mean,
I wanted --
the term itself, I tried on
a lot of different things,
and I think that, one,
it stuck for me.
But I was interested in the
idea that some people
had their shadows be able
to be magically controlled,
but also then that they had
to give their shadows energy.
And you have sort of
two options as a gloamist.
You can do it the right way
and you can feed
your shadow, your own
energy and control it,
or you can --
first of all,
you can steal energy
from other people
through work or mostly
and you also can let
your shadow sort of
go off and do its own thing.
You can give it energy
and then you can give it
the parts of yourself
you don't like
and let it sort of pilot itself.
And it's more powerful
that way.
And so it's very tempting to do.
But then first of all,
when you put aside
the parts of yourself
you don't like,
those parts have
a lot of vitality.
They're part of what
makes you.
And so what do you
 lose without them?
And then secondly,
what did you make
because now your shadow
has gotten consciousness
and it is a thing.
>> Megan Labrise: Are glow
mists born or made?
>> Holly Black: A great
 question.
So one of the things I
decided about this world is
it's a world in which
because the way that you --
So one of the things
when you have a shadow,
if you overuse it,
if you push it past
the point where it can endure,
it kind of burns up
and you lose your
shadow entirely.
And so I assumed
that for a long time
people would become gloamist.
You know, some people are
born with two shadows
or with their the ability to
control their shadow.
And some people are often
through trauma,
like gain the ability to
control their shadow.
And I figured they probably
burned it up
trying to figure out
how it worked.
And so only in very recent
times do people actually
know enough to be able
to share information.
So it's a fairly new science
and people don't know how
to make gloamist.
That's part of the problem.
People want to be gloamist
and they have all kinds of
weird YouTube
tutorials for how you can
wake up your shadow, many of
which are very dangerous.
Like many theories are
still being put forward.
You kind of steal someone's
shadow that's awake already.
>> Megan Labrise: But it's 
not nice to do.
>> Holly Black: It’s not
nice to do.
[laughter]
just like it's not nice
to kill people
to make your shadow
more powerful.
>> Megan Labrise: But it's nice
to read about in this book.
It's very propulsive read.
So earlier in the introduction,
I mentioned Charlie Hall,
the woman at the center
of this fantastic woman,
fantastic thief, 
now a bartender.
She's not a gloamist.
>> Holly Black: She's
,not a gloamist.
>> Megan Labrise: She's not.
Can you tell us a little bit 
more about that character?
Such a rich one.
What do you love about her?
>> Holly Black: Well, I mean,
I love a character
who makes a lot of mistakes.
And Charlie, she has made
a lot of mistakes in her life.
From the time
she was young,
she got sort of conned
into becoming a thief
of just regular stuff for
a friend of her mom's.
And then she graduated
into becoming
a thief of magical tomes
because, as I was saying,
there's not a lot of information
in this world about how magic 
works and people guard it.
And it is mostly considered
that printed media
,is the safe way to go
because you might
 say to yourself,
why not digitize all of this?
Well, the issue is that when
in sort of the early days
of people digitizing the
information they had,
there was some
false information
inserted in and people died.
And so as a result, there's
a lot of hoarding information
and a lot of distrust
of anything
that isn't in its original form.
>> Megan Labrise: Right, 
and there's quite a market
for this information
which is very interesting.
You go into all of these
matters of class and industry
and, oh, secrets and puzzles.
It's very delicious.
>> Holly Black: I had a friend
I was trying to explain this
world to.
and he said, oh, yeah,
if I got a hold of these books,
that would tell me how
to be a better gloamist,
I would read them,
I would note down
what I needed and
then burn them.
I was like, you are a monster,
but also fascinating, right,
because then it's true.
It would just be
your information.
>> Megan Labrise: So, Charlie,
this bar that she's working
in right now, what's it like?
What's the business like?
>> Holly Black: I mean,
so I set the novel
in western Massachusetts,
which is where I live.
And the bar is kind
of my dream bar.
It's a little gothic bar,
a lot of absinthe.
They set things on fire.
It's nice.
It's a good little bar.
And underneath, there is
a guy named Balthazar
who runs a shadow parlor in
which he hooks people up
with various different kinds of
shadow magicians
that they need to get jobs
done, that they need.
>> Megan Labrise: Among the
many things I would say
about this book, it is,
in a lot of ways a love letter
to the service industry, I feel.
Were you ever in
the service industry?
>> Holly Black: No, but I have 
a lot of friends who are
a lot of friends, and I have--
so, yeah, it really was,
I think, a love letter
to western Massachusetts
where I live.
And as a result, to a lot of
people I know there
and a lot of just strange,
weird places that exist there.
And so, yes,
this bar doesn't exist,
but many places like it do.
>> Megan Labrise: Well, you've never been in
the service industry, but 
obviously you love to entertain.
This book is dedicated for
anyone who has ever come
to New Year’s Eve at my house.
Care to explain?
>> Holly Black: Sure, so while
 I am not in
the service industry, one day 
a year, I bartend at my house.
I have a huge New Year's party,
probably going on for 20 years
every year,
tons of people I have like
and I work all night
making drinks.
And I'm really fascinated with
concocting and doing that.
But also I'm very, very shy.
And so having a job
at a party is great.
>> Megan Labrise: That's the trick.
>> Holly Black: And so like, I 
love bartending because yeah,
because then I have a job
and everyone has
to come talk to me for
a little while.
And so that was when
I thought, well,
what is the thing that 
I know a little bit
about enough to sort
of fake it?
I was like, Well, bartender.
[laughter]
>> Megan Labrise: We're going
to put a pin in this and maybe
a little bit of a tease because
you're actually a part of
a really vibrant, fascinating,
creative community.
So I can imagine some of
the people in attendance
at these fantastic over the top
New Year's Eve parties
where you mix up all the
good drinks.
Any dry ice?
>> Holly Black: I've never done
dry ice because I believe
that people would be
indiscreet with it.
[laughter]
I truly believe that by the end
of the night,
someone would have burned
part of their tongue off.
[laughter]
>> Megan Labrise: Well, better
safe than sorry, but, I mean
everything is changed
in the last few years,
so maybe one day down
the line, you know?
>> Holly Black: Sure, sure.