This post is about something that has been a very wild ride for me, but one worth hanging onto. And I think this is only the first of many posts about it… but I wrote another book! I’m SO excited to announce my first full-length novel, The Witches of the Cormorant!!!
Reconciling with Fantasy
The Witches of the Cormorant is the first fantasy book I’ve started since my doomed series, which I briefly mentioned in my second blog entry. With those books, my problem was simply that I bit off more than I could chew. I wasn’t ready for such an enormous undertaking and my constant rewrites were really hurting my progress. The problem was, it needed those rewrites. We are constantly growing as people, which I can accept, but I started the series when I was thirteen – and thirteen-year-olds are not great writers. So I was in a perpetual battle of growing into a better writer and trying to rewrite my old badly penned beginnings. It was… a hot ass mess. To put it bluntly. And it’s no surprise that I had to abandon the whole series.
But I LOVE fantasy, which is probably illustrated pretty clearly by the stories in Little Boats, and I couldn’t keep myself away from the thought that I needed to revisit it. And then, one day, I got an idea.
A Bit About Plot & Process
Let’s be clear here: I initially had no intention of making another attempt at fantasy. It kept rattling around in my head… but I resisted. I was honestly feeling a little burned out. And I didn’t want to seem like a one-trick-pony who can only write in one genre. So I took a brief stab at a sci-fi book, which only amounted to about thirty pages before The Witches of the Cormorant popped into my head and erased everything else. And – at least in my opinion – that’s always how the best stories are born. They make themselves known to you and then they take over your creative life.
The Witches of the Cormorant began with the thought, “What if there was a world where magic existed, and witches were exiled to an island from the day they were born?” So – even though I was already about twenty pages into my sci-fi book – I let myself sit down and write a sentence. “The princess was born with the mark of a witch: a thick head of hair brushed with a single streak of pure snowy white.”
And it inspired me SO MUCH. Suddenly I couldn’t focus on sci-fi, all I wanted to do was write more about the exiled princess. I named her Thistle. And I’ve fallen in love with the world where she lives.
But it’s a world that is far from perfect. The people of the mainland battle with slavery, religion, classes and hierarchies, and superstition – as well as the prejudice that causes them to send their witches into exile as infants. And the island, for all its peace and sustainability, is not the idyllic place it at first seems to be. Its residents are governed by the secrets and confinements of their exile, separated by gender and burdened by history. And their ruler, a mysterious deity called the She, is feared even on the mainland.
Thistle spends the first fifteen years of her life living freely in the village and learning the basics of magic – until the day, as the tradition goes, she must choose the path she’ll walk for the rest of her life. Her best friend Fern becomes a healer. She herself makes a more difficult choice: she goes to live in the temple in the island’s mountains, and becomes a Priestess of the She.
But her world shifts entirely when she is chosen for the temple’s least coveted position: the voice of the She. She is forced to expand an already overwhelming collection of secrets, while gaining a world of new responsibilities. Her relationship with the island’s infamous ruler becomes closer than she could ever have thought possible. And all the while, her secrets and her imprisonment chafe at her unbearably.
Meanwhile, her sister – the princess Amarra – is dealing with her own troubles. She has been fighting off her suitors since she was thirteen, dueling them for her hand and soundly besting them all. But a strange grim prophecy has told her that her father will find an unbeatable challenger to become her future king. Though the High Priest assures Amarra that the Gods stand behind her, the princess’s doubts and fears begin to weigh on her as she grows up – and as she finds her way as a future Queen. Eventually the weight of her kingdom (and its growing slave trade) are enough to distract her from the foretold future… until an arrogant prince strides into the throne room and lays a challenge at her feet.
And then – well… I don’t want to give anything away. But I have become ridiculously attached to this book, and ridiculously excited by it. At this point I’d say it’s replaced ‘Till Tomorrow as my personal best. The work was hard, but so so rewarding.
Finding Inspiration
Because I have often allowed my inspirations to come from unsustainable sources, this time I had to find them somewhere else. But that turned out to be easier than I thought! The biggest ones became:
Nature –
My time living in Northern California gave me a ton of imagery: towering redwoods, coastal cliffs, the seemingly endless Pacific Ocean. And I’ve always loved plants. This book was a great opportunity for me to mix them into my writing, including a flower I just… made up. Which was a self-indulgent but awesome experience.
Self sufficiency and sustainability –
Thistle’s world is full of farmers and gardeners and people who can readily make their own… everything, from clothes to knives. I did write a lot about self sufficiency in ‘Till Tomorrow, but I feel like this time I was able to take it further – and it’s been so ridiculously fun to write about!
Food –
For some reason it’s also been ridiculously fun for me to describe the various things my characters find themselves eating, or growing for themselves to eat. Maybe it’s just because I love food? Idk, who knows.
Fantasy –
It’s been way too long since I’ve allowed myself to dive into writing an entire fantasy book, mostly out of fear that I would have to abandon yet another one. But – like I said earlier – I LOVE fantasy. It’s been one of my very favorite things for most of my life. And part of what made me need to write this book is the fact that so many aspects of fantasy are just way too inspiring to me. They make me daydream about stories I could tell, and worlds I could create. And then I have to do it.
Magic –
I’ve been ridiculously inspired by witchcraft for years, and I’ve never given myself the opportunity to write about it until now. This book gives me such a perfect canvas to explore all my favorite concepts, from witchy stereotypes to the type of craft practiced in real life. It has felt so good to just let myself create this story.
The Final Step
I feel like I’ve been working on this book since the dawn of time. I’ve put so much into it, and it’s taken so long. But The Witches of the Cormorant is done at last, and after many trials… I think it’s finally time for the world to see it.