Recap of Cassandra Clare’s July newsletter

Credit: Tony Luong for The New York Times

Good morning, afternoon or evening! I hope everyone is doing well after yesterday’s Chain of Thorns release date announcement! While the late date is upsetting to many, let’s not forget that we will have Secrets of Blackthorn Hall to look forward to! Cassandra Clare shared details about the project in her latest newsletter and also gave us a short, but exciting snippet:

Secrets of Blackthorn Hall will be a novel told in serialized format, with illustrations, sound, and more!

You can go right now to to see the first post. While this tale springboards off the Julian/Emma travel year novella idea I’ve discussed before, it expands to include all sorts of other characters — Kit, Tessa, Cristina, Kieran, Mark, Ty, Dru — and plays out in a multi-format way, with letters, diary entries, texts between characters, artwork, even sound files. It also reaches back into the past to touch the characters from The Last Hours and Infernal Devices. It’s a cross-series adventure, and it’s totally free — the full story starts August 16th, and will update every Monday. All you have to do is check in!

An archive of the whole instalive, with translations in German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, is available at TMI Source.

The project will also be translated in German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese by our wonderful hosts: Cat from TMI Source, Rossella from Shadowhunters.it, Gloria aka @niloagray, and Virna from our friends at IdrisBR. There is a “Translations” link on the main page of the tumblr, and we will add a more languages as they become available. I’m excited for everyone to read it!

Thanks for the shout-out, Cassie! The German tumblr/translations can be found here.

And here is the snippet, Mark is writing a letter to Ty:

Greetings and Salutations, Tiberius.

I hope this missive finds you well at the Scholomance. For my own part, I am rather hungover. We took to the clubs of London and ended up swept away in the festivities of Kraig’s retirement party. ‘Who is Kraig?’ you may ask. That is a very good question, Tiberius. As of this morning, I have no idea.

Sounds like Mark and whoever was him had a lot of fun at this retirement party. 😀 I cannot wait to know more.

I am also really looking forward to Sword Catcher, Cassie’s first adult novel. We finally have a release date for it: April 4, 2023!
Yes, this date is also due to the pandemic. Fingers crossed Cassie is going to share more snippets and other information until then.

Let’s circle back to The Last Hours. Cassie “commissioned the amazing Loweana for this James/Cordelia scene from Chain of Iron” – SPOILER AHEAD!

This is so so pretty! ❤

Last but not least, if you want to add to your Shadowhunters books collection, now is the perfect time! Cassie’s UK publisher Simon & Schuster are publishing a hardcover anniversary edition (!) of Lady Midnight!

It’s got a gorgeous new cover, a bonus story featuring Mark and Kieran (“Stars to Burn”), and a letter from me to you! Copies of the anniversary editions will be in stores on September 2nd, 2021, you can preorder from your local bookshop or at Waterstones or Amazon.

Pre-order your copy now or buy it on September 2!

This concludes today’s recap. Have a lovely day! 🙂