‘Selection’ author back with new royal read

The Philippines has a special place in Kiera Cass’ heart because this is where she had her “first rock star moment.”

On Cass’ first visit here, as she was about to enter a National Book Store branch, where she was to do her first book signing, she saw security people trying to hold back screaming girls.

“That’s for me?” she remembered asking. “And if you find videos of me from that time, I was crying because I didn’t know what to do. It was unbelievable. So I’m very excited to be here again.”

Cass is the author of The New York Times best-seller “The Selection,” a series, the latest of which, “The Heir,” has set off this tour.

In an exclusive interview after her talk at International School Manila, she said she discovered her love of writing accidentally.

“Some sad things turn into happy endings,” said the 34-year-old author. In 2007, many of her friends died in a shooting on the Virginia Tech campus where her husband, Callaway, worked and where her friends studied.

Her latest book in the best-selling “The Selection” series

After the incident, Cass said, “I didn’t know what to do. I was very depressed, I was confused. I couldn’t remember things, I didn’t smile anymore. It was a rough season.”

Around the tragic event’s first anniversary, Cass said, “I decided to come around and give my issues to a character, see what she’d do with them. That gave me so much clarity … And then other characters came into my head. They were interesting, so I wrote about them instead.”

She also used her own story to inspire aspiring writers. “I went through something awful and I was able to use it. You can take your awful thing and you can use that, too. Let that motivate you to get out of where you are. Let that motivate you to create.”

Cass advised new writers to “read everything, even the things you think you will hate, or things you hate when you’re halfway through. I think it will improve the way you want to write, the way you want to speak, the way you want to put your voice on paper.”

It was also important for aspiring writers, she said, to “daydream often. I think we fill our days with so much stuff sometimes it’s just hard to let our mind wander. And you need to do that. Put it on your calendar, write it down, ‘This is my daydreaming time.’ Take time to daydream.”

She said being thick-skinned was important in writing. “When you start sharing any of your work publicly, people will be cruel. Not just unkind but cruel.”

AUTHOR Cass

“The Selection” was inspired by the Bible’s Esther and the fairy tale Cinderella, Cass said.

She asked herself: “What if Esther likes the boy next door … and it didn’t get to happen for her to do this other amazing thing?” (In the Bible, a marriage was arranged between Esther and King Xerxes, which put her in a position to prevent the execution of many Jews in his kingdom.)

Or what if Cinderella was not really too happy with her life? “Cinderella never asked for a prince,” Cass said. “She asked for a night off in a dress. She just wanted to go to a party.”

These thoughts got her started on “The Selection” series. After the first three novels, the fourth and fifth books came accidentally, Cass said.

“I think it’s been really interesting to get to change the gender of who’s going to be in charge and go through it the second time, in a very different perspective … I think it’s challenging but it’s also fun because I love Eadlyn

(Schreave, narrator of ‘The Heir’) as much as I love America (Schreave, narrator of ‘The Selection,’ ‘The Elite’ and ‘The One’).”

To her Filipino fans, Cass said, “A massive, massive, thank you. Everybody here is so welcoming, so kind. It has made this so much fun. It’s definitely hard to go to the other side of the planet, but it’s amazing. Thanks for reading my books. Thanks for giving Eadlyn a shot. Totally new narrator feels like starting over, and so many people picked it up, and it meant the world to me.”

Text and photo by Angelica Faye Tolosa