Also, our new daughter arrived this year, and so I am having a great time with her and with my other kids too. I can’t say much, but I’m working on a new project and having a lot of fun (it’s another young adult novel). Now that you’re done with it, what’s next? The trilogy has been a large part of your life for a long time (I’m guessing close to 5 years, if not longer). I think it makes life richer for all of us, and that seemed like something Cassia would realize and want to create. I think that’s where the seed came from, and then also from street fairs and other places where people bring and share their art–I thought how strange it would be to live in a world where that wasn’t available. I have a mom who is an artist, and she often has shows in galleries. Where did the idea for the Gallery come from? And I knew they were each strong in different ways, but sometimes the ways they had to be and were strong weren’t always expected or planned out, but then felt right once I knew the characters more fully as the series progressed. I was surprised by different parts of each of their stories. Are you surprised at how they developed/turned out? Ky, Xander and Cassia really seem to grow individually over the course of the series and particularly in the final book. To me, that’s part of the fun of the story–taking the journey along with the characters and being open to surprises.
It did end the way I thought it would, but there are some lead-up scenes to that ending that changed quite a bit. Did “Reached” end the way you thought it would or did it change during the writing process? You never had a formal outline for the trilogy, but you had lots of notes. There were parts that were trickier–but overall they each had their own difficult moments and really fun, thrilling moments where the writing felt like it was happening almost on its own. Was it harder to write than its predecessors? It’s hard to say, because in some ways I’ve been working on it since 2008, when I started “Matched.” But I turned my full attention to it after I finished “Crossed,” and that was about a year and a half before publication. How long did it take you to finish “Reached”? They aren’t tied to any cities specifically, but for Camas City I was inspired a little by the city of Idaho Falls, where there is a beautiful river that goes right through the town. The Outer Provinces were inspired by southern Utah. “Reached” takes readers back to a cityscape. It was fun and challenging to add Ky in “Crossed” and Xander in “Reached.” I knew after writing the first book that we needed to hear from Ky and Xander too if we wanted to have the complete story. Was it always your plan to share things from all three points of view (Cassia, Ky and Xander)? In “Reached” we get to hear Xander’s voice.
“Reached,” the third book in the Matched series hits bookstores Nov.
Ally Condie is the author of eight novels, including the Matched trilogy.
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