Everything We Learned About ‘Secrets of Blackthorn Hall’

Credit: Tony Luong for The New York Times

Happy Sunday (or Monday), everyone! Yesterday Cassandra Clare sat down with an international group of fansites to reveal her secret project that she briefly mentioned in our anniversary chat back in April. This project, now no longer a mystery, is called Secrets of Blackthorn Hall! It is a free short story for Cassie’s readers and we will be reunited with the characters from The Dark Artifices!
Here is the official announcement:

After this exciting reveal, Cassie answered a bunch of questions, you can watch the chat below and/or read my summary of the most important information.

What else do we know about Secrets of Blackthorn Hall?

• Julian and Emma are travelling in Brazil when they find out that Julian’s great aunt Marjorie has died and left Blackthorn Hall to him. Since Blackthorn Hall, which used to be Lightwood House, is not in great shape, Julian has five years to fix up the house or the Clave takes it back. “The story is about what happens at the house, some surprising things, some scary things, some fun things. It connects The Last Hours to The Wicked Powers and The Dark Artifices.” It is also about the relationships between the different characters.
• The reason why it is going to be online is because there will be multimedia posts: “there’s gonna be art, there’s gonna be photographs, sound clips.”
• Jace’s letter to Clary included in some editions of City of Fallen Angels was kind of an inspiration for this project because Cassie thought it would be cool if her readers felt like the characters were updating them and letting them know what was happening in their lives. There are going to be “diary entries, letters, sound files of music and talking”, art such as “polaroid pictures, pictures people have taken on their cellphone, images of text conversations.” Cassie wanted to create a sense that this story was really happening.
• Cassie always got a lot of questions about Julian and Emma’s travel year, which we will find out about in this story, but since she also wanted to reveal what was going on with other characters from The Dark Artifices, she had to think of a way to include them all so this project was born.
• Kit and Ty are in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall, but Cassie “can’t tell us whether they are in it at the same time, they might be, it’s definitely not off the table. They might see each other in Secrets of Blackthorn Hall. They are definitely talking about each other.”
• Once the second post is up in August, the ask box on tumblr will be open and we can ask the characters questions.
• The first half of the story is written, and Cassie has been working with Cassandra Jean on the art. There are also going to be other artists, but they will be revealed later.
• Secrets of Blackthorn Hall is going to be canon and we will find references to it in The Wicked Powers.
• Cassie would like to make the whole project available as a PDF or something similar once it’s over. A PDF for charity might be nice so that money for a good cause could be raised. A print edition would be “complicated because of all the multimedia.”
• The free online project is going to run for a full year – August 16, 2021 to August 2022 – but only a couple of months are going to pass in the story. The story is set about 1.5 years after The Dark Artifices and about a year before the beginning of The Wicked Powers.
• Cassie is really excited about this project and she hopes it “offers people some real fun for free, every week, just something to enjoy.” She wants Secrets of Blackthorn Hall to reach as many of her readers as possible, so if you want to translate the entries into your language, please contact me via DM (Instagram/Twitter).

Visit Secrets of Blackthorn Hall now to read the first entry!

To share the fun with as many readers as possible, the fansites that participated in the announcement will translate the posts into several languages: there will be German translations (done by me on Die Geheimnisse von Blackthorn Hall), Italian translations by Rossella on Shadowhunters.it, Portuguese translations by Virna on Idris Brasil, and also Spanish translations by Gloria on Los Secretos de Blackthorn Hall.

I cannot wait to see what we will learn about Blackthorn Hall – it is going to be an exciting year! 😀

What do you guys think of this project? Are you happy, surprised, etc.? Sound off in the comments below.