Q: What inspired you to write Delirium? Did you always conceive of it as the first book in the trilogy?
A: The idea for Delirium came from an essay I read by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which he wrote that all great books were about love or death. The next day I was thinking about that quote–particularly about how and in what form a modern love story could be told–while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I was simultaneously watching a news story about a flu outbreak that had everyone freaking out about the possibility of a pandemic, and I was kind of marvelling that people so easily go into panics about reports of these diseases, and at some point the two trains of thought–love, and disease–just sort of combined in my head.
In terms of conceiving it as a trilogy, I has always hoped I would be able to extend the story-from the beginning, I kept the working manuscript in a folder on my computer called "The Love Trilogy." So I had a sense of where the story would go and how it would evolve-and luckily HarperCollins let me run with it!
A: The idea for Delirium came from an essay I read by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in which he wrote that all great books were about love or death. The next day I was thinking about that quote–particularly about how and in what form a modern love story could be told–while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I was simultaneously watching a news story about a flu outbreak that had everyone freaking out about the possibility of a pandemic, and I was kind of marvelling that people so easily go into panics about reports of these diseases, and at some point the two trains of thought–love, and disease–just sort of combined in my head.
In terms of conceiving it as a trilogy, I has always hoped I would be able to extend the story-from the beginning, I kept the working manuscript in a folder on my computer called "The Love Trilogy." So I had a sense of where the story would go and how it would evolve-and luckily HarperCollins let me run with it!