CW and Werewolves? "Shiver" Has Worldwide Buzz, to Launch at WM Bookstore

By WY Daily Staff Sunday, August 02, 2009

In August 2007, author Maggie Stiefvater closed her copy of “The Time-Traveler’s Wife” for the second time, and as she had before, she cried. And Stiefvater never cries after reading a book.

She was sulking around her house, still wrapped up in the plight of the characters, when she made a resolution. “I said I was going to write a book that emotionally poignant,” she said.

Stiefvater made good on her resolution when her second book, “Shiver,” debuted Aug. 1, published as the first of a two-book deal with Scholastic, the world's largest publisher of children's books. The buzz is significant, with online chatter wondering if Stiefvater is the next J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer.

She’ll kick off its publication with a launch party at The College of William & Mary Bookstore from 5 to 7 p.m. this Friday. The bookstore has previously hosted events for the 27-year-old Stiefvater, who spent part of her childhood in Ford’s Colony and briefly attended Walsingham Academy. She now lives with her husband and two children on the Northern Neck.

“Shiver” tells the story of Grace and Sam, two teenagers living in Minnesota. As a child, Grace was attacked by a pack of starving wolves, but was saved at the last second by a gray wolf with yellow eyes. Every winter, Grace has watched for “her” gray wolf. Sam loves Grace from a distance but cannot act on his feelings because every winter, he turns into a gray wolf with yellow eyes.

Stiefvater said the idea came after she spent days pondering how to reinvent the werewolf lore. She was trying to come up with a story for a werewolf-themed short story contest when the idea for “Shiver” came to her in a dream. “At first I thought werewolves are kind of unsexy … they have that whole shedding thing going on,” she said. “But one night I had a dream of wolves in the winter in the snow and then becoming humans who are really humans.”

In “Shiver,” the members of the pack become wolves during winter and humans for the rest of the year. Stiefvater spent hours on the phone with her father, an emergency room doctor, hammering out realistic details of how the transition from human to wolf would occur and what it would feel like. “I felt like if I got one detail that was not logical, it would pull the reader out of the story,” she said.

She also avoided turning Sam into a stereotypical “alpha” werewolf. “I wanted to make Sam this really realistically creative guy,” she said. “I played in a bagpipe band in high school and I kind of modeled him after the guys in the band – creative and musical without being feminine.”

It was important to Stiefvater that her heroine, Grace, was never a victim. In the book, Grace’s parents are often absent, leaving her to fend for herself. “I wanted her to be tough and independent,” she said. “She’s super self-reliant.”

Stiefvater spent nearly five months writing “Shiver,” and a subsequent seven months working with an editor at Scholastic, where she was signed for a two-book deal. She just finished editing “Linger,” the sequel to “Shiver.” “Linger” focuses on Grace’s struggle with her identity and also introduces a new character who is “as bad as he is good,” Stiefvater said.

Although she declared in college that she planned to become a famous author, Stiefvater never thought she would be published by a major company by the age of 27. With movie companies snapping up the rights to books about vampires and werewolves, it’s possible “Shiver” could hit the big screen. But that’s not what thrills Stiefvater about being published. “The fact it’s been sold in 19 countries, that excites me,” she said. “A movie would be very cool, but foreign languages would be much cooler.”

“Shiver” contains a scene that takes place in a candy store modeled after Wythe Candy and Gourmet Shop in Colonial Williamsburg. In the pivotal scene, Grace realizes just how much she cares for Sam when he takes her to the candy shop for a date. Wythe fans will recognize the vivid smells described in the scene: bitter dark chocolate, buttery cookies, sweet caramel.

“It was always the highlight of going to Colonial Williamsburg,” Stiefvater said. “I always looked forward to getting a candy apple.” A gift basket from the candy store will be awarded as a door prize at the book launch.

The bookstore’s event manager, Beau Carr, asked Stiefvater if she would be interested in launching her book in Williamsburg. Carr had already invited Stiefvater two previous times to promote her first novel, “Lament,” which centered on an Irish harp player attacked by faeries. Stiefvater, who played her own Irish harp at the events, was a hit with audiences.

“Maggie engenders a kind of loyalty,” he said. “There’s no sense of her being kind of like, ‘Ooh, I’m a writer.’ She’s a very fun person.”

Although it would be easy to draw comparisons between “Shiver” and Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, Carr said “Shiver” is not about monsters. “It’s a love story,” he said. “It captures the essence of what young, first love is really like in that everything is so incredibly big … that feeling of, ‘Nobody has ever felt this before.’”

Stiefvater, who has always loved the fantasy genre, said she wanted to find the balance between fantasy and realism. “I always liked [fantasy stories] that take place in the real world,” she said. “I like the idea that there’s something more out there, that it’s plausible that magic is around the corner wherever you turn.”