I write Valentine fic. As far as I’m concerned, his relationship to Jace — and to an extent Jocelyn — is the ‘darkness visible’ at the heart of Mortal Instruments, the dark thread of tragedy gleaming through the teen romance that gives Clare’s story its terrible poignancy and point. Fics about Jace and Valentine are my special joy and obsession, but I’m pretty much interested in all things Valentine...

I'm often asked if there will be further chapters to one or another of my completed Jace and Valentine shorts. The answer I always give is: yes, read the others — because I think of all these fics as parts of a single, long story: the story of Jace's irreplaceable, unforgivable childhood with Valentine. A story cycle, in effect, in place of the traditional multi-chapter fic. The connection between the parts is looser — individual fics also work as free-standing stories — but it's really one narrative, meant to be read cumulatively (though not necessarily in a particular order).

I've started writing stories about other parts of Valentine's life lately, and those fics seem to be coming out the same way. I'll begin gathering them up into their own story cycles as they accumulate.

If you have any thoughts about my stories, please do get in touch: I’d love to hear from you! (And I always write back). Thoughts about the fics themselves, or about my take on the books (which I imagine comes out pretty clearly in my writing). I write these stories because I love the original, and talking about Mortal Instruments is always a joy. Just please don’t spoiler me about the second (TMI) trilogy, which I haven’t read! (see below).

And if you spot any typos, do let me know; I do my damnedest to proofread, but something always seems to slip through.

Thank you for reading my stories. And a VERY special thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment on them (and/or review!). Hearing what you think is always fabulous -- and immeasurably helpful.

—MM

A Word About Canon:
I started writing Shadowhunter fan fiction back when Mortal Instruments was (apparently) a trilogy, and I’ve found it easiest to go on as I’d begun. All my stories take the original three books as canon; I haven’t in fact read the second trilogy or the extras Clare has posted online. Try to read my fic as if you haven’t read them either — ignoring the ways it might contradict (or conceivably resemble!) things Clare has established since City of Glass — because that’s how it was written. The City of Bones trilogy was a coherent, amazing story, with an arc that came to an absolutely killer conclusion in City of Glass. If you think, as I do, that Valentine is the irreplaceable heart of that story — well, it makes sense to stop there. My fic is an attempt to explore and pay tribute to that original story: to reconstruct a past and imagine a future that makes sense of it as it stands, without regard to what Clare has done since to remake it. I apologize to readers who find this annoying or perverse, but it’s the only way I can keep writing these fics.

A Technical Note About the Vexed Problem of Names:
The proliferation of identities produced by Valentine’s subterfuges is basically a nightmare for anyone trying to write Jace’s childhood. It feels odd to me not to speak of them as “Valentine” and “Jace”, though obviously neither would have thought of each other that way at the time — awkward for the storyteller trying to get inside their heads. My solution has been to sacrifice consistency for comfort and do whatever is least jarring. Where the POV is Valentine’s, Jace generally shows up as “Jonathan” and Valentine as “Valentine” (he knew damn well who he was, anyway). Where it’s Jace’s, I’ve partly ducked the issue by not referring to Valentine by name at all; but I’ve found myself allowing Jace to remain “Jace” in his own head because nothing else felt like him. Where the POV is more or less omniscient, I’ve stuck to “Valentine” and “Jace”. Of course, in sketches where the POV shifts around, the names are unstable as well: one clue as to whose head we’re gravitating towards.