ELIXIR BOUND is the book that made me an author, but it’s so much more than that. This book and its sequel, ELIXIR SAVED, are memorials to my sister Kylene. In ELIXIR BOUND, Katora, who has a sister named Kylene, goes on a quest to become the guardian of a secret healing Elixir. The Elixir Chronicles are like a wish in book form. A wish for more for my sister.
I’ve written about Kylene a bunch of times here on the blog (see “Still Mourning Kylene 20 Years Later”), and her too-short life continues to be a large influence on my writing. One of my works-in-progress is a picture book about a girl who loses her sister.
Mourning is a life-long process. Writing is one of the ways I try and make sense of this wonderfully complex thing we call life. Naturally, my feelings about Kylene come up a lot in my writing.
Yet, the Elixir Chronicles are fantasy quests with magic, whimsy, and adventure. There are deaths — particularly one in ELIXIR SAVED that is a bit devastating — but death and mourning aren’t main themes. The books are more about living. The characters are figuring out what kind of life they want to live and trying to put that into action.
In that way, it’s like giving Kylene — albeit a fictional one — a second chance at life. Second chances are a main theme of ELIXIR SAVED. Yup, these books are big wishes that I know won’t come true. But it still felt good to write them, even when the writing was incredibly hard at times.
The ebook of ELIXIR BOUND is currently on sale for $1.99. It’s part of the Narratess Indie Sale, which officially kicks off tomorrow. There are over 370 fantasy, sci-fi, and horror book by indie authors and publishers on sale or even free.
It feels really good to be releasing a book after what feels like forever since the last one…and to have another coming next month with MOMMY’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
I recently said that writing WITCH TEST was like giving a hug to my 11-year-old self, and I can’t think of a better way to describe how I feel about this book. It’s about finding yourself in the saddest place you’ve ever been in your life and feeling like the only way to get through the day is to put yourself in a bubble of protection. And how do you find your way out of that mindset?
As I mentioned in my post “The Historical and Personal Inspiration Behind WITCH TEST,” it’s also about long grief and about mourning someone you never really knew. Chapter 40, titled “Ritual,” makes me cry every time I read it, and I’m not a crier!
Some of my favorite things about the book are the crows, the Halloween night corn maze, the trio of witches, and tea time at Mother Goose Apothecary.
Anyway, thank you for all the support of this book and my author career in general. If you do end up reading the book (or a young person in your life reads it), please leave a review on Amazon. You don’t have to have bought the book there to leave a review. It helps boost the visibility of the book to help it find more readers.
Liza is sinking in a bubbling cauldron of middle school rumors.
When the entire eighth grade begins studying the Salem witch trials, it seems everyone is on a witch hunt…with Liza as target number one. Worst of all, her ex-best friend is the one who started a rumor that Liza bewitched a boy with a love potion.
As the bullying intensifies, Liza’s loneliness grows. More than ever, she wishes her mother were still alive. A glimmer of hope arrives when Liza finds her mother’s diary…until she actually reads it. Turns out Liza’s family connection to witches goes back for centuries. So much for the witch stuff being rumors!
If Liza can channel her inner witch at the Halloween night corn maze, she might find the strength to stand up for herself. If not, she risks losing a piece of herself to a growing depression and any hope of happiness.
WITCH TEST is an upper middle grade Mean Girls meets The Craft novel for pre-teens and young teens.
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.
Katie reading to Kylene
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.
Kylene and Katie
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.
Jeff Chapman is stopping by the blog today to share the inspiration behind the first book in his latest fantasy series CAT SIDHE: Into the Witchlands I. I tend to be a bit picky about stories with animals POV characters, but I really loved this one (see my 5-star review on Goodreads). And learning of the real cat that inspired the character of Merliss made the story all the more meaningful. Welcome, Jeff!
A human spirit banished to the body of a cat.
Merliss has seen centuries of change, centuries of trouble.
Something nasty has come through one of the ley gates. It walks upright. It talks. And it looks like an oversized cat, but as Merliss can attest, it doesn’t smell like a cat.
t’s a cat sidhe on the hunt for slaves, anyone with opposable thumbs. Merliss travels to unknown territories to rescue a friend and encounters more trouble making her way home. The situation on the moors is far more dire than Merliss and her friends could have imagined.
Cat Sidhe is the first in a fantasy trilogy. Join Merliss on her prowls through dangerous lands.
Cat Sidhe is fantasy from a cat’s eye view. The protagonist may have been a girl once, but after centuries inside a cat’s mind and body, she’s almost as much cat as human. It’s a struggle for Merliss to hold on to her humanity.
The idea for Merliss, who first appeared in my short story “The Water Wight,” came from a real cat.
Smokey, three weeks after rescue.
In the fall of 2015, I pulled into my driveway to find a small gray cat sitting in front of the garage. I had seen this cat before but never had a good look at it. I had usually glimpsed it at night or twilight and a gray cat in the dark appears to be little more than a shadow. I had assumed it belonged to someone in the neighborhood. I was so wrong. It was starving. I could see every bone in its ribs. Pus was visible beneath one eye. The cat meowed at me. My wife came out the breezeway door at that moment. The cat trotted toward her and tried to enter our house.
We gave the cat some food and water. It ate like it had never seen food before. My daughters surrounded the cat so it wouldn’t run away, but I believe at this point the cat had decided it was going to live with us. We coaxed it into a carrier and took it to an emergency vet. The cat, which we named Smokey, was not sick with any life-threatening disease. She was dehydrated, malnourished (only 5.5 pounds), suffering from an upper respiratory infection and an eye infection, and had a million fleas.
Smokey shows off her two fangs.
Several hours and several hundred dollars later, we returned home with two antibiotics and a sick cat. We quarantined her in the breezeway. Out other cats spent a lot of time sniffing at the back door.
Smokey responded well to the medicines and our TLC. She gained weight and proved to be incredibly well-tempered. She wasn’t the cutest kitty on the block but certainly the sweetest. We soon discovered that she was deaf and missing an upper and lower canine. We had no idea of her age but Smokey appeared to have been up and down the alley a few times. When her quarantine period ended, Smokey moved into the house.
Smokey, looking cute.
We speculated a lot about Smokey’s past. What stories would she tell if she could talk? The speculation got me thinking about characters based on an old cat. Somehow, I made the leap of pairing a human spirit with a cat’s body. In the fantasy world I was developing, this pairing would grant the animal’s body unusually long life, but injuries would accumulate. Merliss was born.
Unfortunately, Smokey passed away in April. Her health had been declining for several months and then x-rays revealed painful bone tumors in her sternum. Taking her to the final vet appointment and staying with her until the end is one of the roughest tasks I’ve experienced. I still miss her every morning when she’s not waiting in the kitchen demanding breakfast.
Smokey’s memory lives on the character of Merliss. The cat silhouettes in the map and at the beginning of each chapter were made from pictures of Smokey.
It’s been over a week since the PIRATE ISLAND launch party at the Milford Public Library and I’m still feeling full of love and gratitude for everyone who helped me celebrate my book. Whether you made it to the event, dropped me a note to say good luck, or bought my book when it first came out last October, I’m so grateful for all of you who continue to support me on this crazy journey of being an author.
There was talk of Captain Kidd and the thrice-cursed Charles Island (the real island that inspired the book), books were signed cookies were eaten, fish were caught, prizes were won, and pictures were taken at the pirate ship photo booth. It was a whirlwind, so much so that I didn’t take any pictures. Luckily, my mom and one of the librarians took a bunch and shared them. So here are a few shots!
