(The latter occurred just a couple of years before Meyer wrote Cinder.) Like H1N1-commonly referred to as the “swine flu”-letumosis is an airborne disease. Although the book is a work of science fiction, the letumosis plague bears similarities to real-life contagious diseases like the 14th-century Black Death pandemic and the 2009–2010 H1N1 flu pandemic. Much of Cinder is centered around letumosis, a highly contagious and deadly disease that’s plaguing the Earth of the novel. Meyer lives in Tacoma, Washington with her husband and two daughters. Her most recent novel, Instant Karma, was released in 2020. She then published the Renegades trilogy ( Renegades, Archenemies, and Supernova).

In 2016, Meyer wrote Heartless, a stand-alone novel focusing on the Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Those novels adapt the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Snow White, and the Evil Queen, respectively. She was inspired to write Cinder after participating in the 2008 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) contest, in which she wrote a story focusing on a futuristic version of fairy tale “Puss in Boots.” After publishing Cinder in 2012, she went on to write Scarlet, Cress, Winter, and Fairest for The Lunar Chronicles series. After graduating, Meyer worked as a book editor for five years in Seattle. She subsequently attended Pacific Lutheran University, where she received a degree in creative writing, and then earned a master’s degree in publishing from Pace University. As a teenager, she wrote Sailor Moon fan fiction under the pen name of Alicia Blade.

Meyer was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington.

Marissa meyer cinder