Obsidian Mirror Blog Tour & Guest Post: Choosing the Mirror by Catherine Fisher

To celebrate the release of The Obsidian Mirror on Thursday I'm excited to welcome Catherine Fisher to the blog today to talk about why she chose to use a mirror for such an important role in the story. Before I hand you over to Catherine I want to give you a bit more information about the book, I'll be posting my review later today but in the meantime check out the book cover and synopsis below:

Jake's father disappears while working with the obsessive, secretive Oberon Venn - and Jake is certain Venn has murdered him.

But what he finds at the snow-bound Windercombe Abbey is far stranger.

A mysterious black mirror.
A hidden diary of lost secrets.
A tribe of supernatural beings who haunt the woods.
A girl pursued by a wolf of ice.

There are life-threatening choices at every turn. But Jake won't stop til he knows the truth . . .

Chronoptika Series:
The Obsidian Mirror
Titles & release dates for future books in the series are to be confirmed

Visit Catherine Fisher's website for more information

Now please give a very warm welcome to Catherine and read her guest post to find out just why the Obsidian Mirror is so important to the story!

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Choosing the Mirror

by Catherine Fisher

When I was very small there was one book I had that I was intensely curious about and that was Alice Through the Looking Glass.

It was the idea of going through the mirror, into another place where everything was reversed. I used to stand looking into the full-length mirror my mother used, seeing how the familiar room became strange and alien inside there, and thinking that the doors and windows might lead out to other places, gardens, croquet lawns, palaces, fields, just like in the book.

There is nothing weirder than the familiar which has gone just a slightly bit wrong.

Maybe that's why, when I decided to write a time travel novel and needed a device that would allow the characters to travel, I chose a mirror.

Mirrors are magical. They show us ourselves, but backwards. Or we think they do. They are solid, but you can see through them.- or think you can. The whole idea of reflections, copies, images, replicants is conjured up by them. Over the ages they have told the future, the past, been used by evil queens, alchemists, scryers, dreamers. So my Obsidian Mirror is just the latest in a long line of magical mirrors, but this one is black, thin, warped and rather sinister. Through it lie the other places. Over our own shoulders. Behind our own backs.

And the weird thing about mirrors is that we can never see our reflections turn round and enter those places.

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What a fabulous guest post Catherine, I don't think I'm ever going to look at a mirror in quite the same way again! It's fascinating to think of stepping into a mirror and going somewhere that is just a slightly twisted version of our own reality. Quite a scary thought actually!

Make sure you check back later today to read my review of The Obsidian Mirror and don't forget to check the rest of the tour stops throughout the week for some more fab posts from Catherine!