Lita Judge: Hi. This is Lita Judge, and I am the author and illustrator of Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and how Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I came to create this book, and then I'll share an excerpt with you.

The journey to write this started 10 years ago, when I read Frankenstein. And in the process, there is a mention that the author, Mary Shelley, was 19 when she wrote the book. It struck me that the author of one of the greatest novels of all time was a teenager, and that started me on a quest to find out more about her.

When I discovered her journals and letters, I found out that she had run away when she was 16. She had become pregnant by a married man, and her father had cast her out of his home, and she embarked on this amazing life where she was exposed to all kinds of literature and the innovators of her day. But at the same time, she faced an incredible amount of hardship. The man she fell in love with really abused her, emotionally, probably due to his own mental illness. And I began seeing her novel not only as a remarkable social criticism of it's day, but also as a creative act of survival, and I knew instantly I wanted to write about her journey, particularly for a YA audience. There hadn't been a lot written about Mary Shelley.

I instantly knew that I wanted to write a visual novel because, as a story teller, as much of an artist as I am a writer, and stories unfold to me as pictures as well as in words. I knew I wanted to do something different than a graphic novel, though, because Mary Shelley herself had been such an innovator. She had not only written the first science fiction novel of the day, but she had been one of the first to write a book in different voices. She wrote her story in three narratives.

And so, I knew that I wanted to do something startling different than what we had seen in a graphic novel. It didn't fit that bill. So, I decided I wanted to do the book with the full bleed illustrations on every single page. I felt like the illustrations, that way if it had that much space, they could hold the emotional journey of her life. Her life was filled with a lot of loss and hardship, and yet she was also this incredibly powerful young woman and a survivor.

I also knew I wanted to write it in free verse rather than prose, because I felt like the poetry reflected her life. She was eventually married to Percy Shelley, the poet. And also, I felt like I could bare the weight of the emotional content of her life. And so, I decided to work with poems and illustrations together to create a visual novel, which I hope is a little different from what people have seen before. I was inspired by Mary Shelley to do something different, and I wanted to help her truth unfold in the pages of the poems and the art.

And now I'll read an excerpt for you. I thought I would start with the first poem, Do Not Return. This is dated June 7, 1812.

"Early summer in a time of war, when the sea is a battleground and ships are weapons, I find myself on the deck of the Ausenberg heading for Scotland. Little separates me from the mail and cargo in the ship's hold. I am like a letter stamped, "Do not return," being delivered to a future I cannot know. I try to keep the shoreline in sight, as if this will prevent the wind driving the sails. But gradually the land recedes into a thin line, and then is swallowed completely by blues colored clouds. I am left to feel completely alone."

And the second poem that I wanted to read is later in the book, when she has conceived of the creature and she is in the midst of writing the novel Frankenstein. The art on the book shows her bent over her desk, writing, and emerging into that atmosphere and ether of the illustration is this creature. It's entitled, "Do You Hear Me."

"I keep writing until my pen scratches pain as loud as screams, but it is no longer my own voice I hear. It is the creature's. Ink black words on paper are no longer words. They breathe and pulse with a life of their own. They are heart and legs and arms and hands made of flesh and bone, and they reach down my throat and into my lungs, and grab my breath and squeeze out my tears until they become the creature's own. His voice calls out to me, "Now, Mary. You begin to see."