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On Saturday, April 21, 2012, I posted my very first blog post. Overall, my posts were all over the place. I was reviewing books, movies, albums, word vomiting, I had my mid-life crisis, had my posts scheduled on different days depending on the week. It was a LOT. I'm surprised I had any followers, as chaotic as my blog was. But either way, I made it to TEN YEARS! Cue fireworks!
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| Yay, Squall is happy for me. |
I also believe that first post was my very first query. (Shout out to Revo Boulanger for helping me with my synopsis back then, and also my old coworker Lisa for uplifting me still!) I queried Save the Queen to Tom Doherty & Associates and was rejected. 10 years later, with countless more rejections, two title changes, two publications, two sequels in progress, and a pending re-release, I'm still passionate about what is now Fractured Princess.
There have definitely been a lot of bumps in both my life road and the writing road, but I can't wait for people to latch on to Jonnie the way I had intended from the very beginning. I'm also proud to see how far the story and my writing have come. Characters took hold of the reigns and steered the narrative in ways I did not expect. Storylines emerged that I would never have imagined 10 years ago. I tweeted a couple of weeks back how big the sequel is about to be, and it will be BIG. I'll get to explore side stories I just wrote to get out of my head and weave them into what was originally a standalone book with no desire to write a trilogy. And to be frank (you can be Mary), I could write several novellas based off of diverging timelines, and I keep thinking about it, so you never know.
Now, let's look back at 2012, shall we?
If you click this link, you can read 4 posts about the first stages of the book, how I pared it down from 120K words (I don't even remember what the heck was in those early chapters to warrant 120K) to 107K (it's now at 92K if I remember correctly), how I had to add a little thing called logic to situations, and some spin-offs that I was working on, some of which make it into the series (*hint-hint wink-wink*).
This post is where I changed Jonnie (then Ghuli (JOO-lee)) from white to black in real-time. The picture that inspired me was this now hard-to-search picture of Kerry Washington. As you can read, I had first decided to make the Crystal Bearers a mix of colors, but I ultimately decided to make them black. I also settled on diamonds in their hands. The Sprites were also originally white, but I diversified their skin tones as well, with the northern Sprites being lighter and the southern sprites darker. This is currently happening again with another race in the story for geographical reasons. More on that later in the year.
This post is definitely something I want to do with the final version, so I can see how far I've come. You posted the first line or last line of your chapters to see how compelling they were. It was such a great idea. I wonder if they're still doing it.
Here is a God-awful query I thought was the one. If passive was a query. It's this one!
And lastly, here is a Q&A I was honored to be a part of way back when.
Jonnie and I have come such a long way, and there is more to come. I will be at Dover Comic-Con this June with free samples of the new edition and hopefully some bookmarks, business cards, etc., whatever I can get from Vistaprint. I'll be able to release the new edition of FP in 2023, and I plan to have it published in all formats. In the next 10 years, I hope I will have published the entire series, moved on to one of my NA fantasies, and maybe even have finally found a job I love, because even 10 years ago, I was lamenting about being an admin, and *sings* I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm still here, here, here...
For everyone who may have started with me on the old Write Mage blog and for new followers everywhere, I thank you!
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