Rell, the origin story

The paperback version of my book Rell is now available. It took some last minute graphic design wrangling with the cover (3mm has never been so frustrating), but it’s now officially out there in the world. There’s still a lot of things I want to keep doing for it in terms of promotion and just sharing it with more people, but this is a big step for me.

This book has been in my head for a long time – it started with a 15 minute break. I worked at a college library and I was sitting in a beautiful section of the stacks with my writing notebook, avoiding, as we writers often do, the project I was “supposed” to be working on. Instead I was thinking about seeing Fellowship of the Ring for the first time that weekend (I hate that this dates me, both in terms of how old I am and how long it took me to get this book out into the world, but oh well) I was wishing there were more female characters in the story, and more fantasy stories in general of the kind I liked. Of the Robin McKinley, Patricia McKillip, Tamora Pierce variety. (Now I’d add people like Kristin Cashore, Shannon Hale, and Rae Carson to that list, hooray!)

And this girl popped into my head – it was a pretty clear mental picture. She had long dark braids, this weird chainmail meets wool sweater armor, two swords, and a stubborn, quiet nature. I’ve had a fantasy world in my head since I was a teenager, and several books connected to it in different stages of incomplete, and this girl slid right in. By the end of that fifteen minute break I had a basic story idea for her figured out, and she was pretty real to me. That was the birth of Rell.

It took a long time for me to actually finish the thing. I originally envisioned it as a series, so there’s dozens of pages of backstory that ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor when I realized I wanted this to be a tighter, shorter, standalone style book. I had the fun experience of having a character who started out as a placeholder and became a beloved secondary character who may now get their own book. I had the thrill of sharing it with beta readers who loved it and encouraged me along the way. I had the painful experience many fantasy writers have of cutting off the prologue. But in the end I’m pretty happy with the novel that emerged. It’s been a rewarding process, even if it took forever.