Versions of this post about how I became a writer have been on several other people’s blogs, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here on my own blog. I was thinking about it as the release day for ELIXIR SAVED rapidly approaches and figured it was a good time to put it up here.
I thought my life as a writer began when I was 19 on particularly hot day in early spring 2002, a black-letter day, the blackest of black-letter days in fact. I was in college on track to becoming a physical therapist with an early acceptance into the graduate program. But I didn’t become a physical therapist; I became a writer.
I’ve since come to realize, with the help of my mom, that it was much earlier than that that I began my writing life. On my blog post on the release day of the ebook version of ELIXIR BOUND, she wrote, “Although you would have done fine as a physical therapist, I always knew it was not your calling. You were a writer ever since you could pick up a pencil and I think I always knew that, after all the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree (of course I’m talking about your dad).”
Well, my mom was mostly right. Even before I could pick up a pencil, my mom would read stories to us: the Little Golden Books, the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, all kinds of fiction. I think that’s when I became a writer.
When I stop to think about it, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out I was a writer. The signs were all there. My family and I used to write and illustrate our own picture books about the adventures of Sam the Billy Goat. At the climax of the story it would always read, “Voop Whoosh! Up went the Billy Goat.” And he would fly up to save the day.
I wrote (and sometimes illustrated) stories my whole childhood. In middle school, high school, and college I worked on the school newspapers. Yeah, I think I had been in a state of denial for 19 years…which brings us back to that black-letter day…April 16, 2002. The day my sister Kylene died.
I don’t like to talk about that day. How the forget-me-nots were in bloom. How there were recording-breaking high temps. How it was the worst day of my life.
So what do you do when you’re 19 and your sister’s just died? Well, once you’re in a place where you can think again, you reevaluate. Everything.
For me that meant rethinking what I wanted to do with my professional life. Kylene gave me the permission to pursue my passion. So I began writing. Eventually I decided not to continue studying physical therapy. I kept writing, often not even sure who I was writing for. Kylene, an audience, myself?
I pursued publication. And got rejections, along with some encouragement. I revised, learned a lot more about the business of publishing. Wrote some more. Revised some more. Got a lot more rejections…you get the picture.
Ten years and four months after Kylene died, my book was finally born into the world. And what was that book about? A young woman, entrusted with the future of her family’s secret healing Elixir, going on a quest to find the Elixir’s secret ingredient.
I don’t need a psychoanalyst to tell me I was fulfilling a wish with that book. It was supposed to be about Kylene, and it is in some ways, but it’s really about me. Because for those 10 years, it had been too hard to write Ky’s book. I tried. ELIXIR BOUND started out from her point of view, but I just couldn’t write that book yet.
But I did eventually. ELIXIR SAVED is Kylene’s book…and a few other characters’, too, because writing just her story was too much (or not enough). It’s complicated.
As for Kylene’s real life story, I believe each of us as individuals doesn’t truly realize the impact we have on people. Each person we touch—whether it be with a story, a hug, a smile as we pass a stranger on the street—leaves a ripple.
Kylene, in her short life, left lots of ripples. With the people she loved. With the people she cared about. The people she felt compassion for, which was pretty much everyone. The people she shared the Harry Potter books with. Even the nurses in the hospital from the short time she was sick felt her ripples.
I like to think that each ripple I make with the Elixir Series is really Ky’s ripple…because I’m not sure I would have discovered my life’s passion if it weren’t for Kylene. It makes my heart smile to think that Kylene is still making ripples on the world, and that I have my own little role to play in that.
About ELIXIR SAVED: Three lives saved by the Elixir; three lives bound by it.
The Elixir entwines the lives of those it touches. Once upon a time, Kylene, Zelenka, and Devon tasted it and escaped death. None were left without scars. Now, a shocking message from the Ice Queen–one of Mother Nature’s higher beings–sends each survivor on a quest. Kylene travels to the frozen depths of Blanchardwood, Zelenka heads back to the wilds of Faway Forest, and Devon journeys to a reclusive mountain temple. The three paths converge in a war against an ancient and tricky foe. And even the Elixir cannot save everyone. The fate of the world balances on the edge of a sword, and the outcome depends on whether the survivors will sacrifice their second chances.
Escape back into the world of the Great Peninsula in this much-anticipated sequel to the award-winning ELIXIR BOUND. Perfect for fans of the Thrones of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas.
Find the book on Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, IndieBound, Smashwords, Apple Books, and Book Depository (for international folks).
