FAE: A Novel Origin Story
Fae
A Novel Origin Story
As of right now, in addition to the Fae Trilogy, I have approximately 23 other novels or series that I would like to write, as well as 18 abandoned ideas. The genres range from fantasy/sci-fi to romance or women’s fiction to middle grade fiction. Some of the ideas are ancient - the earliest ones on the list stem from ideas I had in middle school.
I don’t say this to suggest that I am some sort of writing machine. I say this to illustrate that there’s a LOT going on up there in my head, and most of it doesn’t make it onto the page. And beyond that - I hold on to ideas for a long, long, long time without ever doing much with them.
Fae started it’s life as one of those middle school ideas, only it was wildly different back then.
Fae: A Vampire Novel
I was in middle school from 2004-2008. You may remember quite a few books that were popular in that era, and one of them was Twilight. Now, 7th and 8th grade me was absolutely enamored with the story of Twilight. As a huge fan of mythical creatures, it was groundbreaking (for me) to see them depicted trying to behave like regular people, in our regular society. And that’s when the first inklings of Fae appeared in my mind.
I wish I remembered the original title I gave this project, but sadly that’s been forgotten with time. What I do remember is the plot, and some vivid moments. In this original world, my main character Ava was a sassy, pale redhead who had just been turned into a vampire. Expecting the worst, she’s instead let in on a huge secret. You know that gated community of snobby rich kids you grew up near, but never interacting with? Well you should be glad they never opened those gates, because darkness lives within. No, that’s not a direct quote, that’s 26 year old me trying to give you a taste of a 13 year old’s idea. Basically, Ava finds out that she’s going to be assigned a fake vampire family to be a part of, and live forever 16 as a filthy rich, vampire teen.
Highlights of the story? Glad you asked. When Ava comes to the door of the mansion she’s about to be living in she meets her new fake mom first, Genevieve. Her fake dad Sebastian isn’t home. But just when Genevieve informs her she now has older twin sisters, Ava is assaulted by - wait for it - a projectile stiletto launched at her from a 3rd story window. Because her new sisters think she looks cheap, and fake, and want nothing to do with her. Before they were Olina and Haloa, the twins in this series were Kendra and Paige: blonde, mean girl caricatures who pretty much only existed to show Ava’s transformation into an ice cold vampiress of luxury.
I know what you’re thinking - how could anyone *not* write this book? Well, sadly, at 13 the rest of the plot - i.e. the entire book past the first several scenes - completely eluded me. So I put this idea away for a while.
Fae: Mean Girls Meets Royalty…But with Fairies
Around the middle school years, my mom gave me this absolutely stunning book about fairies and fae folk lore, which included tons of different monsters and creatures and their environments, complete with pop-up-pages and paper pop-up monsters that you could play with. That only fueled my love of all things fantasy.
So, it’s probably not a huge shock that the next time I revisited Fae, it was to decide that the biggest mistake I made, the reason for my mental block, was that Ava was never meant to be a vampire. She was meant to be a fairy! A beautiful fairy, one of a bouquet of colors and abilities. I was in the midst of high school at this point, probably 15 or 16, and a whole new story began to unfurl. I called it Welcome to Fae Acres.
Now, many of the elements I dreamed up at this age did make it into Fae as it stands today, so I don’t want to get into those details. But here are some gems. The Court, the group that governs fairy kind in this book, used to literally be called the F.A.E. (no idea what it stood for, I think this was a running joke) and were treated like the Kings and Queens of the fairy world. Appointment was for life, and prospective future members were called the Princes and Princesses.
This version also brought in the first elements of darkness to what had previously been a fairly campy story. See, in this version, when people were changed into fairies they were brought to an island in the Bermuda triangle. Unfortunately, the changing process typically manifested itself in violent outbursts of fairy abilities that are deadly to all around. So in order to protect the fairies supervising the transition, these changing fairies were given human targets to channel their uncontrollable dust. Spoiler Alert: a lot of those humans don’t survive.
But then there’s Ava. Instead of going insane during the change she remains sane - so sane that she’s able to survive in the wilderness for 2 weeks before the fairy who changed her - Shaun - can hunt her down. She gets to see firsthand how unique and magical and awesome she is as she starts being groomed to become a Princess. But Ava rejects this strange life, so she’s sent to - you guessed it - a secret luxury community of fairies called Fae Acres. She’s to live with Genevieve, Sebastian, and of course, Kendra and Paige Blackford. Still blonde, still mean girls, but now tasked with Ava’s introduction to the world of Princes and Princesses. Also in this version, your wing color determined practically everything about you - your personality, your abilities, even your hair color in some cases.
This book definitely had more, I would even say *most* of a plot. But the writing was stilted, the storytelling was definitely tell-don’t-show, and I never got past the first few chapters for that reason.
Fae: Almost…But Not Quite Right
Throughout those High School years, I also read copious amounts of fanfiction, wrote quite a bit, even “published” some of it on fanficton sites. I love this time in my life, because it really affirmed for me that I am a writer. At the same time, I got sucked into the rabbit hole of fanfic stories, rather than working on my own work.
I came up with tons of ideas during high school, but the next time I truly revisited my original work in any substantive way, was in college. My sophomore year of school I completed a fantasy mermaid novel during NaNoWriMo, and began revisiting all of my original novel ideas. When I stumbled across Fae again, I cringed at my juvenile writing and story structure, but I knew something was there. So I went back to the drawing board.
This story started with human, teen Ava being abducted by a beautiful man who turns out to be a fairy. He sneaks her away to the forest in what she assumes must be a dream, until the pain of change takes over. However, because of her unexpected control, she is able to escape him and survive in the woods (sound familiar)? She’s finally found and brought to the Fae (still the government, but not an acronym) who in this version finally became a semi-democratic institution. They don’t trust her, and she doesn’t trust them, so she’s shipped off to Genevieve’s where she can be watched, and hopefully befriend the twins.
In this version, fairy dust was visible, Genevieve finally became a main character, and the twins were revamped as Hawaiian natives Olina and Haloa. Ava also lost her red hair, entirely revamped as my 2nd black main character, ever. I think I had even created Cedric - my male main character - somewhat at this point. But despite me making it 21,000 words/6 chapters in, something about the story still wasn’t gripping me. Ava getting into the Fae just wasn’t enough of a plot hook to keep me invested as a writer.
Around this time is also when I first thought of my Super series, as Marvel films began to go from hobby to obsession in my mind and I sat down to watch Sky High every single time they replayed it on TV. So Fae fell to the wayside.
Fae: The Birth of a Series
At age 22, I had graduated college, gotten a job, and was rotating around the country doing project-based work when I decided to revisit my “Work in Progress” folder yet again. Years before, a series of no’s from every agent I queried about my mermaid story had dampened my writing spirit a bit. But at this point I’d gone back to fan fiction, “successfully” sharing a modern, gritty, adult story that made me feel invigorated to write. Upon re-reading my mermaid story I realized why agents weren’t chomping at the bit to represent me, but I didn’t want to work on that story. I wanted something fresh.
I still remember how it felt when I entirely re-conceptualized Fae. I was sitting in a company-furnished apartment in St. Louis or NYC (timeline is fuzzy) when I realized what was “wrong” with the story. Ava was too knowledgeable, the twins were too one-dimensional, and the story was pointing in exactly one direction. And then I thought of countless stories I’d read since I first had this idea at 13 and I realized I wasn’t being shocked by literature anymore. I wanted to write something unexpected, something with a twist that I hoped readers wouldn’t see coming. Something that didn’t follow a linear path from beginning to end, but instead took readers on a real journey. I wanted a book where you didn’t know who to trust.
I’m not joking at all when I say it felt like being struck by sudden mania. I started typing, typing, typing and thinking a million thoughts per second. If I did A, what would then have to happen. What about B? What if - no, wait - yes. Yes! I pretty quickly figured out the entire plot of Book 1 and then realized, it had to be Book 1. There had to be more. I thought, if my characters end up here in Book 1, where can we go? What ultimately has to happen?
I thought I would take a break, and revisit things later, but the ideas kept coming one after the other. I thought of 2 different plot lines for the series and started to map out the first, which is when I quickly realized it had to be the plot line for the series. Books 2 + 3 flowed out of my head into my notes, laid out in front of me. When I finally emerged on the other side, hours later, I knew that this was a book series that I was going to write and share with the world.
I immediately called my best friend, Michelle, and made her listen to the whole thing. And she was excited too! Michelle - who told me to my face that my other story ideas were predictable, or too cliché, or played into tropes too much to stand out especially as debut novels (I love her for this honesty, don’t worry), loved this. She also thought it was unique, and different, and cool. And so I kept planning.
As I planned, I also saw it as an amazing opportunity to imagine and depict a truly global world. By this time, I had freed myself from expectations of what the world “wanted to read” and committed to show the world as it truly is, a beautifully diverse place. And I got to include all of this in my planning, my characters, my future plots, everything.
Then it was time to write.
Fae: Finally
I’ve already told you that I managed to complete NaNoWriMo before, which for those who don’t know, means that I’ve written over 50,000 words in 30 days. So realistically, this could have taken me 2 months to write.
It didn’t.
I started writing this version of Fae, the one you’ll one day be able to purchase, in early 2017. I finished it in May of 2020.
The truth is, being an adult is nothing like being a kid, or even a college student. Life is a mishmash of conflicting priorities, especially when you’re single. I started and took part in so many things in those roughly 3.5 years. Even with my writing! I wrote 60% of another book during a different NaNoWriMo, which I hope to one day finish and publish under a different name. I dreamt up several more novels - especially Sci-Fi and romance - that I know I will one day finish and publish too. I added on to Fae, bit by bit, 2K words here, 4K words there. But then something awesome happened to me. I met my friend Alyssa Markins, and she re-introduced me to self publishing.
I was first introduced to self-publishing in High School as an option for people with no talent to pump junk out into the world just to be able to say that they’re published. I never really did any more research than that, because I was going to be a “real author.” But a decade later, after facing rejections on the first book I ever queried, and having spoken to several “published” authors with no readers, no support, and no future for their stories, I was a bit more open minded.
As Alyssa explained the truth, backed by facts and testimonies, I realized that I needed to be a self-published author. I wanted that control over my own project, I wanted to have a strong hand in shaping my story, and most importantly if I was going to hear “no” again I wanted it to come from a reader, not an agent. Making that decision to pursue self-publishing was a first in a long chain of moments where saying yes to Alyssa meant saying yes to parts of myself that I had shoved in the closet without even realizing.
And when she finally asked me to join her to help make Kingdom Books a business, an innovative resourcing & publishing company aimed at today’s modern writer, I finally got serous about Fae.
I put together a real publishing timeline for Fae, decided when I want to see it available for sale and created deadlines for every step of the process. It was like the story was just waiting for me to do that, waiting for me to commit fully to getting it out into the world. Because just like that, I finished it.
Now, it’s October. So far, in addition to finishing Draft 1 of Fae, I’ve hired a developmental editor, gotten her feedback, and written Draft 2 of Fae. As we speak, my Beta Readers - a group of amazing women - are reading Draft 2 in order to give me feedback that I’ll use to write Draft 3. And on and on we’ll go, until Fae is finally given a real name, has a cover, and hits the proverbial stands in October of 2021.
That’s Fae’s story.
I wanted to make this post today for a few reasons.
First, I am insanely proud of myself, but also grateful for every influence that has helped shaped Fae. I would not have a book if it wasn’t for every single book and fanfic I’ve ever read in my life, my mother, my friend Michelle, my college housemates in ONE Tower, my sorority sisters, or my business partner Alyssa. (Technically I still don’t have a book, but that’s semantics at this point).
But second, I think it’s important to acknowledge that sometimes it’s only the barest seeds of a story that will make it into the final version. That doesn’t mean the story isn’t a good idea, or that the writer isn’t talented. If I had given up on Fae at any of the points in its journey, because I thought it was a “bad idea,” I would not have a book. Or, at least, I would not have this book. It can be super tempting to think that some people have “good ideas” and some people don’t, but the older I get the more I think that’s not the divide. Instead, it’s the people who are willing to keep pushing until they hit gold, or the people who expect to hit gold the first time their shovel hits the dirt.
The truth is, in the end, everyone can keep working until they find the gold.
Original Cover for Welcome to Fae Acres, in case you thought I was kidding.
