The madness of writers

Hello friends!

It’s been a very busy month. I apologize for severe lapses in email and comment response. I’m overwhelmed and I think I should probably take a day off today. I’ve been in writing hyperfocus mode where it’s hard to stop, while also marketing my books including trying to learn the Ways of BookTok for an upcoming video, and of course keeping up with Youtube—I had more sponsorships than I’ve ever had before which meant having to get many things done ahead of time.

I found another old post in my email archives, from when I FIRST released the Potion Dealers as The Vengeful Half in 2016. For any of you feeling like your projects are taking too long, or are too ambitious, or it’s madness to work on them…this one is for you. Bear in mind that this ended up being only the BEGINNING of getting this book to its final form! We’re all mad here!

“Writing The Vengeful Half has been a long, crazy journey of persistence.

I mean, crazy. Like, plenty of times I felt like this whole world was a curse because people kept telling me to just drop it and not get hung up on a story. And sometimes we do get too close to things. But the best stories, I firmly believe, are stories that are loved. Those are the stories that come alive.

1993: I created the Hidden Lands. Very few concepts remain from those early days, because eleven-year-olds are absurd. Like, in the original, all the characters were thousands of years old for no good reason and I had a whole plot arc about characters getting turned into babies.

2000: I completed my first novel, “Selkie Rock”, which was a spin-off from the Hidden Lands. I was too nervous to do anything with it. I didn’t complete another novel for five years.

2005: I started writing this little romance sub-plot about Alfred, the heir to an organized crime family, and Olivia, who was a nature-loving, craftsy, vegetarian girl. The story had zero plot. But I loved the chemistry between Alfred and Olivia so much that I wrote 60,000 words in one month. I was shocked. I had written so much! Why wasn’t I writing more novels and trying to sell them? I had no idea how to turn 12 years of Hidden Lands writing into a novel, so instead I just wrote Magic Under Glass.

2007: I was still trying to rewrite/sell Magic Under Glass, but Alfred and Olivia remained my favorite characters ever! By this point I had completed a (terrible) Alfred and Olivia YA novel titled “Something That Sings” (soooo terrible). I sent it to some agents, and only one agent bothered to read a single word of it.

2008: I sent a newly revised version of Magic Under Glass to the one agent who read a single word of “Something That Sings”. She became my agent and sold Magic Under Glass in three weeks! I remember when she called me to tell me we had an offer. I was so happy, but the foremost thought in my head was still, “I wish it was Alfred and Olivia…"

2010: By this time, I had rewritten the book many times. It was better. I sent it to my agent again. She gave me some good revision suggestions, but she still didn’t feel it was ready to sell. I wrote Dark Metropolis instead, and she sold that in three weeks AGAIN.

2012: I revised it still more times. I had lots of people read it. One of my teen readers made up an Olivia Halloween costume, wore it trick-or-treating around her neighborhood, and sent me a photo. I started to think maybe I really had something here. But I was in the middle of the contract for Dark Metropolis.

2015: My two-book contract for Dark Metropolis was done. I had learned a LOT from working with my editors at Hyperion, and I did one big revision sweep of Alfred and Olivia, amping the plot way up. I was REALLY proud of this version. I sent it to my agent again…and got the bad news. She still didn’t feel like it was something she could sell and suggested I self-publish it. I ended our wonderful seven-year working relationship because I was determined to sell this book, and started looking for a new agent. Requests trickled in. Then a couple of rejections. Meanwhile, I started researching self-publishing, and my partner Dade started urging me to self-publish so I could get the books out sooner, tell a longer and more ambitious story, and include artwork and comics. I pulled the book from the agents who had it and started working toward self-publishing.

This was such a scary time for me! But I think it was all done the way it had to be done. I still adore my agent and I wouldn’t mind working with her again, but I’m glad I left her at the time. It was good to step aside from all the other voices that had gotten involved in my storytelling process. I’m glad for the past eight years of publishing contracts and my five previous published books, because I learned so much about writing that helped me to tell a more ambitious story, from both my agent and all my editors. It really wouldn’t have been good at all to sell this book in 2008.

The story you will read in “The Vengeful Half” is approximately my 30th draft of the novel and represents 22 years of my dreams and ambitions. I hope that, whether or not you read and enjoy it, you will be a little bit inspired to stick with the artistic projects that call out to you, even if someone has told you to ignore them.”

Oh you poor crazy girl.

Anyway, thank you so much for your support of the Potion Dealers and if you’ve read it, liked it, and want to reward my absolutely insane level of persistence, please consider leaving it a review, especially on Amazon, or recommending it to other readers! Word of mouth is GOLD.

xo,

Lidiya