Q. Why did you choose to have the story take place in Georgia, specifically Savannah?
A. I went to college in Atlanta and got to spend some time in Savannah, which is a lush, lovely, and very polite town. But the south is also such an embattled place, still recovering from its civil war scars in a way I think other parts of the country don't like to think about. Setting Luce's reform school on the grounds of an old Civil War Academy opened up all these cool possibilities to allude to the *big* battle that's coming in the series.



Q. Many of the scenes in the cemetery are both eerie and frightening which completely draw the reader into the Swords & Cross world; in conjunction with question one, is there a specific place that you thought of when writing about this place.

I guess I've always had a thing for cemeteries. Growing up, I had a friend who lived right behind a pretty decrepit old cemetery, and we'd sneak in there all the time to make up stories about the people whose tombstones we read. In Fallen, Cam attempts to do this with LuceÑthough for some strange reason, she finds it unromanticÉ

The cemetery at Sword and Cross is fictional, but like most things in my books, it's Frankenstein-fictional, an amalgamation of every cemetery I've ever been to. The tilted tombstones I borrowed from the Jewish Cemetery in Prague, the Spanish moss and weeping willows probably come from the Bonaventure in Savannah, and the mausoleum descriptions come from the Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans, which I visited while writing the book. As for the feeling Luce gets when she's thereÑ"I'm a nice girl, who do I keep finding myself in this freaky old cemetery?"Ñmaybe that dates back to all the hours I spent in that neighborhood cemetery when I was a ten year old kid.



Q. What was the reason (if any) for placing Luce and Daniel in a reform school rather than the regular high school?
A. There's a line in Bob Dylan's song Not Dark Yet: "I've been down at the bottom of a world full of lies." I think that's where Luce finds herself at the beginning of the novel. She's at the end of what she sees as a long line of failures, uncertain about who or what to believe. Her character is a) stunned to end up at reform school, and b) certain that she cannot sink any lower. Melodramatic? Sure! But she's headed down a one-way street towards a more complicated understanding of her life. It takes something drastic (like reform school) to get her to a place where she stops expecting her life to look exactly as she'd planned, and opens herself up to a host of interesting opportunities.

(Then again, on the same album, Dylan also sings: "When you think that you lost everything/you find out you can always lose a little more." I guess that's where the sequel comes in!)



Q. The themes in FALLEN are rooted in theology. Is that something you've always been interested in? What kind of research did you do to write FALLEN?
A. I was a Jewish kid with a Catholic father growing up in Texas. So yes, theology has always fascinated me. When I was in grad school, I took a course with an incredible professor who taught the bible as purely a work of literature. When I started writing Fallen, she pointed me towards a lot of angelology. Stacks and stacks of books now cover the dining room table where I'm writing the second book, Torment.

Angels do show up in the bible, but their appearances are fleeting and often non-descript. It's kind of strange that what springs to mind when most people think of angels todayÑthe fluffy wings, the baby faces, the pure intentions. Almost all purely cultural inventions. So in Fallen, I try to play around the idea of what an angel is "supposed" to be like.



Q. Do any of the character's names have a historical or religious significance that you can tell us?
A. Well, the book of Daniel is the first book in the bible where an angel plays an independent roleÑthat is, an angel not acting as merely a replacement for God. This seemed fitting for a guy as fiercely independent as Daniel.

As for Luce, I dunnoÉdoes the name ring any biblical bells to you?



Q. As the series continues, will we find out more about the boy from her home and the reason for why Luce was sent to Swords & Cross?
A. Everything will be illuminated, yes, yes. PatienceÉ



Q. The battle between good vs. evil has been told in many forms. What do you think stands out about your depiction of this classic theme?
A. Here the lines between good and evil are blurred. I usually like to do the opposite of what I think people expect me to do, and maybe I'm acting out that impulse in this book. I'm interested in to questioning old notions of angels and demons, heaven and hell. I want readers to fall for the "evil" characters in these books as much as they fall for the "good" ones. Luce herself is so wide openÑshe's perfect to be put in the middle of this age old battle between good and evil, to have to determine whether each side truly is what she's grown up thinking it is.



Q. Readers seem to love stories about forbidden love. Why do you think that is?
A. I have friends who groan about my hopeless romantic advice on relationships. I'm probably the least likely person ever to say, "he's just not that into you." To me, forbidden love is exactly the kind of thing worth striving for. Not because it always works out, but because it's worth the effort. Falling for someone off-limits or hard to get is a kind of emotional endurance training. Whether you get the guy or not, in the end, you're left with this polished, stronger, sharper you. Feminists, feel free to balk at this defenseÑbut we've all been there at least once!




Q. Can you describe a typical day in the life of writer Lauren Kate?
A. Writers have so many inane quirks, don't they? I have to position my computer so I'm sitting with my back against a wall. So that nothing canÉI don't knowÉsneak up on me. I like noise that's just south of distractingÑtraffic, rain, music in another language. On average, I have about ten open books and three kinds of drinks on the dining room table where I write. I have a notebook where I jot down things I think are brilliant and must remember to include in a later chapterÑand then I promptly forget to include them. When I'm working on a deadline, I write about eight to ten pages a day or until I'm completely brain dead and can hardly speak. Then I try to go out into the world and shock myself back into being a social creature. I don't think any of it would be possible if I weren't married to a guy who made me laugh so much.