Introducing Hannah Cobb, Author of Mortis

Assassins.

An underground school.

A girl who can turn invisible.

A brilliant author who thought it all up.

Welcome, Hannah Cobb, author of Mortis! I don’t host many guest authors, but after reading an advanced copy of Mortis, I just couldn’t help but share it on my blog. You can read my review and add Mortis to your to-read list on Goodreads.

Without further ado, please give a loud round of applause for Hannah Cobb, our guest. Today she’ll share about how she got the idea for Mortis.

My first novel, Mortis, takes place in an underground school that trains orphaned children as assassins. Did I grow up in a maze of underground caverns, learning how to kill people? No. (Not that I would admit it here if I had.)

In choosing to write fantasy, I pretty much threw myself off the safe “write what you know” cliff-edge. So where did I get the idea for this novel? That’s a tricky question to answer.

As a writer, my ideas come from everywhere — my mind is a sort of always-simmering gumbo made of bits and pieces of things I’ve read and watched, phrases I’ve overheard people say, places I’ve been. I can remember exactly when the main characters of Mortis — Jane and Felix and Willy — first popped Athena-like into my head, though.

My college was on spring break and I was sitting in the back of my family’s twelve-passenger van on the way home from visiting my grandparents, trying not to be carsick or yell at my rowdy siblings, entirely unable to record this first glimpse of a story I really wanted to write. As soon as I got home I raced for pen and paper.

Character always comes first for me. I need to know what sort of a person my protagonist is, and how she will approach a problem, before I can try to write her through that problem. In Mortis, the problem turned out to be that my protagonist’s home is a school that trains assassins. Jane is getting ready to graduate when she stumbles across dark secrets about her school. She has to decide if she will keep quiet, and stay safe, or if she will betray her school and fight against its evil.

But writing isn’t just a bubbling stew of ideas; ideas have to be fleshed out with research. Fantasy worlds require thousands of details, from what kind of food the characters eat to what kind of government rules the world. Sometimes research means finding online forums where EMTs and firefighters answer writers’ questions about medical issues (like, for example, where you can stab a character without instantly killing her. Trust me, this is not something you want to test in the real world.) There are plenty of things even an avid author shouldn’t Google, especially if your story involves explosives; when you get to that point, you have to find a real live person to talk to. Sometimes a really fun day of research means going to a renaissance festival and begging a blacksmith to explain how medieval swords were made.

Many, many hours of plotting and crafting and staring blankly at a computer screen go into turning ideas into a story — but in the end, when the characters I created fight their battles in a world I imagined, all the idea-collecting and writing is worth it.

Hannah Cobb lives in Maryland, where she maintains a cover identity as a librarian by day and moonlights as a writer. When she isn’t writing, Hannah enjoys designing elaborate period costumes and collecting swords. Mortis is her first novel. You can find Hannah at:

Her website – send her an e-mail and read more about her books!

On Facebook – like her page!

On Goodreads – add her book to your “to-read” list!

Have you ever had to research something that couldn’t be fully experienced or discovered on the internet?

What do you think of Mortis? 

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