What a whirlwind few days it has been for me.  All the anxiety and frustration about meeting my self deadline and I made it, barely, staying up till 4AM leading it’s way out of Valentines Day.  So yes, my book is out. (I will write about my thoughts on Valentines Day in a completely different post…..at some point.  But for now, let’s stick with the long road that led me here.

When I started Rise of a Queen it was one of many ideas scribbled down on notebook paper that lay around my desk.  Some I had gotten quite far, other’s not so much.  I spent endless nights researching about many things, the most interesting ones were of a run down state mental institution and all the things they considered treatment.  There was so much to write about regarding that.  Maybe I will pick it up again, who knows. If you know anything about my writing style it was right up my ally.  Those nights kept me awake.  But I’m veering again.

Right, okay. This book.  It really did start with chapter one.  Only chapter one.  Can I say cheesy when I say it came to me in a dream?  Yeah I dream interesting things, you can ask anyone who’s been around when I’ve woken up screaming or running from my night terrors.  Good times.  My imagery of Tessa was so clear.  It was easy to close my eyes and see such a young, beautiful, torn woman/vampire look out sitting on a nice pallet in front of a huge window at all the things she was missing while realizing how special she was.  It’s original name was Vampire Realm.  Just that, nothing else. Then I put it down.  Life happened and it happened hard and fast.  Years passed by.  Then things changed.  

I met a new friend. He convinced me that I MUST pick it back up and work on it and work hard.  Literally a muse (nothing more but a very dear friend), but will remain nameless.  He poked and prodded and helped me along the way as everything flowed back to me and I fell into the novel, immersing into the character herself.  With many ideas thrown back and forth it was getting done.   It was getting done so much I realized that I had more to say that I had to push it down to one novel realizing there was so much that it equaled three novels, each one full of so many personal stories it became its own spider web of connections, betrayal, deceit  dark history, love, (yeah I know, I’m a big un-romantic kinda girl) loss, and growth. Everything was needed and had its place.  That is how it became Rise of a Queen because it is about Tessa’s growth while not ignoring the other characters that will be important in the next novels of the series.  There might be enough to do a prequel about Greco’s past, but we’ll get to that if I can.  

Chapter Five was the last one I wrote, although I had the notes ready for it.  It was hard to find a way to do it tastefully and correctly.  I needed it to be so emotional, sad, upsetting all at once.  Never meant to be something taken lightly, because it is not a light subject.  I probably rewrote it 100 times.  So many pieces of wrinkled papers surrounded my desk you could dive into it like a pile of leaves.  

As previously stated, the tech world somehow passed me up.  Not really all of it.  But the introduction to e-books made things different.  I went from pen and paper to typewriter, then to WordPerfect, then Word, then Open Office.  It needed to be on paper.  PAPER, you know the thing that comes out of a printer with magical words are written on it, looking the way a manuscript should look. But hold up.  What happened?  E-books and formatting is what happened.  Its that kind of world and I realized how terrible thing looked when I had to reformat.  Who would have thought the tab key was a no no?  Who honestly really thought about page breaks?  I just wrote. That’s what I did.  So I have had to progress. I was against e-books.  Really I was.  I still love the smell of paperbacks.  I love the sound as the swish of the turn of the page.  I like going into a used or new bookstore and realize the magic that was involved in in each one of them.  E-books can do that, one just has to learn to navigate the whole process.  It is much harder to find what you are looking for and to find the audience that really wants it but can’t find it.  It also was very limited……the publishing world had decided to take it’s dear sweet time to progress with the times almost as bad as I had.

I think all the above makes sense.  When my mind starts going it tends to ramble on and on and on.  But long story short, that is how my first published novel began in its rawest form and how it, and I, had to grow (gently nudged or thrown into the pit of fire, you name it) with the times.  I’m quite certain I’m not the only one and each person has their own growth story, and I love to hear all of it.