The doomed love stories of Lauren Kate

“I love a doomed love story," declared author Lauren Kate, who recently visited the Philippines to promote Torment, the second book in her bestselling young adult paranormal romance series, Fallen. “The idea of romance to me is not something like Jane Austen; it’s more like The Great Gatsby, where everything is just screwed up and nothing’s ever going to work out, but everybody’s tragically in love with each other. I think that’s really interesting. These are the kinds of romances that tend to show up in my books." And what could be more doomed than the love between an angel and a mortal? It’s “doomed" spelled with a capital D.

Love goes before the Fall In the Fallen series, Lucinda Price (Luce) is sent to a reform school in Georgia after she is suspected of involvement in a freak accident that killed her boyfriend. At the school, she meets Daniel Grigori, a boy who she feels an instant inexplicable connection to. It turns out that Daniel is an angel who was cast out from Heaven because of his love for the mortal Luce, and that their souls are cursed to roam the Earth to find one another and fall in love over the course of many different lifetimes. But in each lifetime, as soon as Luce realizes that she loves Daniel, she dies, only to be reincarnated to begin the tragic cycle all over again…until something in her current incarnation changes everything. If the series’ sales figures are any indication, Lauren is not alone in her fascination with tragic romances. Fallen spent six months on the New York Times Best Seller List, climbing to as high as #3 in the Children’s Books category, while the paperback edition later debuted at #1. Torment , the sequel, debuted at #1 and continues to hold a spot in the top 10. The road to success is paved with good stories The success of Fallen came as a surprise to the gracious author, who admitted that her only goal was to get her books published and, in the process, to tell the best stories that she possibly can. The road to fulfilling her dream was certainly not carved by accident. At a young age, Lauren was already dabbling in songwriting, poetry, and plays. “It’s always been something that I’ve done without really thinking about it," she says. “By the time I was in high school, I had funneled all of the storytelling into fiction. That’s when I started taking creative writing classes." Since then, she consciously worked towards her goal—majoring in creative writing in college, working as an editor in a publishing house, and earning a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of California in Davis. A friend in the publishing business gave her a chance to finally fulfill her dream. “It only takes one person to say yes to your book and it changes your life forever," she said. The result is her 2009 debut novel, The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove, which she describes as “a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in high school." The book received favorable reviews and was generally hailed as a fine debut effort despite being a small release. After the publication of Betrayal, she found herself an agent and eventually sold Fallen. A strange sacrifice The seeds of Fallen were planted back when Lauren studied biblical narratives for her Master’s degree. She came across several passages, most notably Genesis 6:1-4, that described angels who fell in love with mortal women. She thought it was exactly the kind of complicated romance that she loved to explore and write about, and it had the potential to turn into an epic. “I like the idea that there was this strange sacrifice made for the sake of love," she explains. “To give up a very established place in whatever we imagine Heaven to be like, to come down to Earth to give [the relationship] a shot…it felt like it could extend beyond just the two of them." She later did extensive research on angels—consulting with a biblical scholar, turning to apocryphal texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and reading the likes of Jeffrey Burton Russell and Milton. Eventually, she drew on all of her research to create her own angel mythology for the series. Theologically obsessed Although the core idea of Fallen is based on biblical text, Lauren made it clear that the series is not meant to be provocative or to be religious, but she is interested in the questions the books raise about faith and theology. “I think that I’m a theologically obsessed person," she replied when asked if she considered herself religious. Born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, and besieged by evangelical friends when she was growing up in Texas, she became fascinated with biblical stories but “more in a theological and almost narrative sense rather than a religious sense." However, she does profess a belief in angels and in reincarnation, another key concept that drives the plot of Fallen. “I have had several strong moments of déjà vu from the time I was 10 or 12," she said. During a Q&A session with a fan at the Meet and Greet event organized by National Book Store last November 27, Lauren shared that she thinks she was a Scottish soldier from the Middle Ages in a past life. Given the chance, she said she would love to glimpse all of her past lives just like Luce did in Torment and would continue to do in Passion, the third book in the series, which is slated for a June 14, 2011 release. Fallen: The Movie It wouldn’t take prophetic powers of biblical proportions to foresee that Hollywood would jump at the chance to adapt Fallen, and true enough, Disney acquired the film rights to all four books of the series. The screenplay for Fallen is currently being developed, and Lauren is involved in a consulting capacity. The studio is apparently also starting to look into casting; they are interested in Australian actor Liam Hemsworth for the role of Daniel. Lauren agrees that Hemsworth has the look but admits that she does not really have a choice of actor to play Daniel. She, however, does have a dream cast for the other characters. “I like Ed Westwick for Cam. I like Emma Stone for Arriane...I like Lucy Hale. I think she has the same look as Luce, and I think she’s a cool actress." She also revealed that she wrote the character Miles in Torment with Michael Cera in mind. Cera was recently seen in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a great adaptation like The Road and Atonement, which Lauren hopes Fallen will be as good as. The revelation of more books The movie has a tentative release date of 2012. It will be a big year for followers of Fallen—the Doomsday prophets will have a field day!—as the last book, Rapture, closes the series with the final battle between good and evil in the same year. Beyond those projects, Lauren has been writing outtakes from Fallen that might later be collected into an anthology, and she is considering writing books about the other characters in the series. She’s also developing an idea for another quartet of books geared for young adults. It wouldn’t take prophetic powers of biblical proportions to foresee what’s to come from all of that: there will be more doomed love stories in our future. - GMANews.TV