How can I get you to visit my town/local bookstore/convention?

My travel is largely dictated by conventions, so if there’s one local to you, ask them to invite me to attend. I also do bookstore events, but have very little power to set those up myself; your best bet is to ask your local store to contact my publisher. This increases the odds of me being able to do another book tour, an activity which unfortunately has been badly kneecapped by the covid pandemic. You will generally have a much better chance of success with an independent or specialty bookstore — Barnes and Noble rarely shows much interest in such suggestions.

I will do school visits if you’re local to the San Francisco Bay Area or its environs. (I’ll also do them elsewhere, but very few schools have the budget to fly an author in. If you do have the budget for that, though, I’ll certainly consider it.)

 

Can I translate a work of yours?

For novels, novellas, and nonfiction books, please contact me, and I’ll put you in touch with my agent. In almost all cases, this is something that would need to be licensed and paid for — a non-trivial percentage of my income is derived from foreign rights sales, and allowing a fan translation would basically kill any hope of a paid deal. However, if you’re interested in this as a professional matter, we’d love to talk!

For short fiction, also contact me. I have licensed short stories for translation, usually for a small fee.

 

Can I write fanfiction based on your stories? (Or any other fan activity.)

If you want to compose your own music, or draw some art, or write a story, or whatever, based on any novel or short story of mine, then so long as you aren’t using it for commercial purposes or trying to lay claim to the original work itself, I say have fun.

If commercial profit comes into the picture (you’re a musician who wants to record the song on your next album) or you might be stepping on the toes of a right reserved in my contract (a student film), then please — as above — contact me so we can work something out. Even if what we work out is just a thumbs-up to whatever you had in mind in exchange for a link to my site, it’s better to make that clear. I’m unlikely to object or to charge you some exorbitant fee. (Unless you’re a major Hollywood studio, in which case I’m getting a media agent and instructing that person to take you for all they can. (I should be so lucky.))

In the case of things like music and visual art, I’d be flattered if you let me know this is happening. If it’s fanfic, I’m unlikely to read the work in question; legal twitchery aside (what if you write something and then someday I use a similar idea?), it would probably just hurt my brain to see other people’s takes on my characters. But I do believe that fan work is a sign that readers are engaged with the story, so I don’t mind people playing around with my ideas. If you feel so inspired, then by all means, go right ahead.

 

Why do you use a pen name?

Because my legal name is a pain in the neck on all fronts. I wanted a name people could spell and pronounce and correctly guess the gender of.

 

What should I call you?

Marie. I don’t need to be “Ms. Brennan,” and if I’m acting in a professional capacity (e.g. at a convention or other event), I prefer to use the name associated with my job.

 

Will there be a third doppelganger book?

The answer to this contains spoilers to the series, so I’ve cordoned it off; click through only if you’ve readWitch.

 

For the Doppelganger series, I’ve seen three nearly-identical mass-market paperbacks and one that’s different. What gives?

What you’re looking at, if you’ve seen all four of those, are the original editions of my first two novels (Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch), and the reissue editions (confusingly retitled Warrior and Witch, respectively).

Why did that happen? As I understand it, two different sets of people in the production department handled the covers for Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch, with the result that they really didn’t look anything like each other, and a number of readers ended up picking up the second book first. Despite that, they both sold well enough that my publisher decided to reissue them shortly after my third (unrelated) novel Midnight Never Come hit the shelves, and they took the opportunity to repackage the duology so it was more obviously a set. This meant recovering the first book to look more like the second (since everybody vastly preferred that cover, myself included), and altering the titles to make a better pair. I was a bit sad to lose Doppelganger as a title, since that’s one of the two things I had when I started the book, but on the whole I’m generally happy with the repackaging — though it has, unfortunately, created a bit of confusion.

(For the record, I think my favorite set of titles for these books is the German edition, which gets across all the relevant concepts while still being nicely matched:Doppelgänger and Hexenkrieger.