April 11, 2023

Commissioning Lucy

Check out this amazing drawing of Lucy DeSoto, the protagonist of my first novel, “Terra Firma,” by Micaela “Mica” Stempellato! (You can find her art on Instagram at @artsy.mica.)

There’s a story behind this one: In early February, right before I began working on “Terra Firma,” I attended an author event put on by Books & Books with the YA fantasy author Cassandra Clare. A girl sat next to me who turned out to be Mica, and as I told her later, I wish I would have spent more time getting to know her before the presentation began, because she’s amazing.

Instead, I had my face buried in my book. The event was for the launch of “Chain of Thorns,” the third book in the Last Hours series, and I was so paranoid that there were going to be spoilers for “Chain of Iron,” the second book in the series, that I was reading as fast humanly possible, trying to reach the end. (I wasn’t even close, so not sure why I bothered. Also, there ended up being no spoilers whatsoever.)

During the Q-and-A, Mica asked Cassandra if she could bring a present for her up to the stage. Cassandra looked at the images Mica gave her, exclaimed over how wonderful they were, and commented that she recognized Mica’s work from Instagram. The exchange had the whole crowd intrigued.

As soon as Mica sat down, I basically said, “OK, girl, give me your Instagram name, because I want to look you up.” When I did, my jaw dropped. Mica does the most gorgeous drawings of all kinds of fictional characters, not just Shadowhunters. (Be sure to check out her Daisy Jones stuff!)

Anyways, I knew as soon as I finished “Terra Firma” that I wanted to give myself a little reward by commissioning a drawing of Lucy from Mica. I told her a little about Lucy physically and from a character perspective, and off she went.

Here’s the finished product … so amazing! Can’t wait to commission a drawing of the “Snowbird Season” characters from Mica when that book is complete!