Sara St. Kelley
asked
Isaac Marion:
Hey Isaac! I to start by telling you just how much I enjoyed The Burning World (a lot; I enjoyed it a lot) and that I'm so excited to read The Living. You are rad. Where did you come up with the title The Burning World? I was reading your old blog and I was struck when I was reminded it's called Burning Building. Does the blog title have anything to do with the book title? Or do you just like the word "burning"?
Isaac Marion
They're not directly connected but they come from a similar idea. Fire can mean a lot of different things. It destroys, but it also provides warmth and light. It can mean chaos and ruin, but it also implies passion and fervor. "The Burning World" is meant to evoke both of those things. In a literal sense, R is entering a world that's in chaos. Various forces are vying for power. There's war and mayhem. And it feels like the Fire Church might be right, that God is coming to burn it all down. But in another sense, it's a positive thing. R is stepping out of his dead gray internal life and into a bright, noisy, colorful world of heat and light and that demands a lot more of him. He's engaging with life again, and it's hard. It's his biggest challenge yet. So the title is meant to evoke both of these senses.
More Answered Questions
Erika
asked
Isaac Marion:
Hello Isaac. I am a huge fan of Warm Bodies and I love that you used zombies to investigate some really deep, meaningful themes about apathy and opening yourself up to feeling. To me, the book was a somewhat indirect discussion of mental illness, anxiety in particular. Did you want to investigate anxiety through your writing? Do you think that the unfeeling world R lives in is a reality that we also live in?
Sara St. Kelley
asked
Isaac Marion:
Goodreads tells me The Living is coming out in 2017. Is Goodreads lying or is that in the realm of possibility? I assumed for a while that the two books would come out closely together because of how they were written so I'm curious how the process of splitting and then publishing them has been for you.
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