Besides which you see, I have confidence in me

 Well, it's been a while.

Hello, friends!

It's been a hot minute since I last updated anything and I am officially forcing myself to transition this to a writing blog. Do I still want to be on Doctor Who? Yes. But I'll settle for writing an episode.

For my writing credentials, we need to go back to third grade. I read Redwall and fell in love with the series. And I decided to try my hand at writing a story in my own world exactly like Redwall, which basically is fanfiction and I wouldn't realize that until I was about sixteen when I discovered what fanfiction was. I did the same with Warrior Cats in fourth grade, complete with an entire who's-who for the Clans and the new one I made up. It was intense. I stayed with that for a couple of years until I was twelve.

Twelve ended up being a pretty pivotal year for me. 2007-2008 (because my birthday is toward the end of the year). I met my best friend, Anayetzy Martinez, that year. I got into the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme despite not applying for the program (this is a wild story and just one more example of me being thrown off cliffs unexpectedly, which I'll come back to), which did more for me than just about anything else I did as a teenager. And, most importantly, my Young Women's leader's husband suggested a book for me to read. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I mean, yeah, strictly speaking the series is Mistborn and the first book is actually called The Final Empire but I don't think I actually know anyone who calls it The Final Empire and not just Mistborn. 

I devoured it. And then reread it. And then reread it again. And again. And then I read the second one. And then I hounded my parents until they took me to Barnes & Noble so I could get the third one. And then I threw that book against the wall because of one of the revelations toward the end. And for some reason, all of the books I read between the ages of 10-18, I just assumed that the author was dead? 

I don't know either.

I also still have that borrowed copy because I kept rereading it and just kept forgetting to give it back (sorry, Luke Yardley! You're also the best for not insisting I give it back!)

But the point is that I read Mistborn and decided, in all of my twelve-year-old wisdom, that I could do that too. I could write a story like Mistborn, but most importantly, I could write my own story. The characters Miya and Mia (names taken from The Princess Diaries and that specific scene where Lana gets coned) were born. Miya accidentally killed her parents with magic and went off to a magic school to learn how to use her magic, and then she became like this assassin bodyguard? And Mia was a necromancer with a pet dead sparrow named Fergy. And my boy Jay, who wasn't usefully magically. 

This was shortly before the anti-fairytale I wrote in seventh grade as a precursor to Sleeping Beauty about a princess who had to go rescue the prince she was supposed to marry, and then she and the witch who kidnapped him, fought about who was going to keep him because neither of them wanted him (because Prince Hubert was an awful individual). And then Prince Hubert died falling off a cliff, the princess got to live her best single life, and her sister got married and gave birth to Aurora.

I was also around thirteen, so that should pardon me for the ridiculous angst going on there.

I've been working on that story more or less for the past fourteen years. I've written actual fanfiction. I've had a thousand and one ideas, from assassins that are cat/wolf themed to And I got into Brandon Sanderson's class at BYU. Which is still one of the crowning achievements of my life and further proof that I am rather blessed.

And then my cousin Jocelynn Taylor and I, in August of 2020, were up much too late and talking. And we got onto the subject of her sister's questionable reading choices (because MMCs are always so problematic, even though I love the characters that are assholes the best). And then the fact that love triangles in YA novels are actually love lines because in order to have a triangle, you have to have a connection between all three points (looking at you, Twilight). And then we decided to write a book for Joce's sister so that she could have something that A) was a proper fantasy novel, B) had an MMC love interest who wasn't a questionable choice, and C) was a proper love triangle. That story turned into a plan for a trilogy. 

We borrowed some concepts from a story that I'd sort of planned out in 11th grade Environmental Systems and Societies. A single character got ported over. The magic system became triangle based, and then double triangle based once we started writing (triangles in triangles). Everything got dumped into a post-apocalyptic world. And once we started writing, things got real weird and we ended up having to basically restart the book, cutting out 30,000 words. And this is a very different book than we originally planned for.

But the characters remain the same: Jo Alderete, orphan (because all good stories have to have orphans); Alistair Gregg, golden retriever (because we wanted a character who was just good); and Nico Worthington, nerd boy (because there is a dearth of really intelligent main characters). 

A year and a half later, we finished it. Triangle Theory: Primal Surge was born out of our love and gentle mocking of certain YA tropes and a desire to give Jocelynn's sister a book with a non-creepy male love interest.

Now, why am I updating this now of all times? Because Jocelynn and I are querying for it to be published and are beginning work on book 2: Shards of Entropy. Waiting to hear back is torture for Jocelynn. Me, I just want to keep submitting queries. It turns out that submitting queries and doing all of this is a lot like auditioning, which I decided I loved after my first audition. I just want to keep querying and part of me hopes that this first really small batch decides that Primal Surge isn't what they're looking for and the larger, much more vocal part of me thinks the other part is just stupid. 

But it's fine. Our book is good enough to get published. Does it still need help? Yes. But the foundation is good enough for publishing.

Hopefully. There is an element of uncertainty here, but I'm trying not to let that sentiment out into the universe too much and instead am focusing on our confidence in what we've written. I also try not to get too overly religious because it makes me so uncomfortable when people are all preachy and stuff, but I have to close this out with an acknowledgement that Jocelynn and I were blessed with this talent and we're choosing to share it with the world, to light our candle and not hide it under a bushel.