WARNING: Mild Spoilers for Archaic below

I don’t quite remember when the story started, but I do know how it did. When I was about fourteen or fifteen in high school, I was obsessed with Harry Potter (still am). At that point, I had attempted to write a book once, a modern fantasy tale with a young girl trying to navigate life in the modern world. I had written over 100 pages, but eventually realized I had gone way off topic and that my story had no structure. That’s when I decided that rather than just write, I should gather notes and slowly develop a story. My writing was not the best at the time, but I wrote everything in multiple journals I kept.

When Archaic began, it was only notes in a journal. When I found those notes years later, I realized it started as a complete copy of Harry Potter. Whoops! Fourteen-year-old me didn’t know any better. I may have not had an original story at that point, but what I did have was enough of an imagination to create some characters. The various movies and books I loved had allowed me to come up with original characters that I wanted to see, beginning with my main character’s Eric Blackwood, and Cornelius ‘Neil’ Alewar. For example: my protagonist Cornelius, and my antagonist Malphilus came to life the day I watched ‘X-Men: First Class’. Something about the relationship between Charles Xavier and Magneto made me wonder, what if two characters so divided by their goals had a connection neither could sever? What if they had no choice to remain in each other’s lives, even when they were in separate dimensions. These two characters began with a mental tie, where they would share thoughts, which eventually evolved into a physical one. What if the hero could switch bodies with the enemy for moments at a time. I wasn’t ready to write a book, but what I was confident in were my ideas.

When I was sixteen, I revisited it and felt I had enough notes to begin writing. I wrote my first chapter, the prologue to the true story, the day Eric Blackwood was stolen from his family. What happens in that first chapter even ten years later is still exactly as I wrote it when I was sixteen. Proud of my first chapter at the time, I asked my high school English teacher if she could read it. When she returned the chapter, I was stunned to see how heavily edited it was, but grateful she had. Although it was clear my grammar structure needed a lot of work, she had wrote that she found the story intriguing and that was enough. When I graduated high school, I continued to write the story and actually got halfway with 150 pages. But life forced me to put aside the writing. Community college classes and work had taken away my motivation to write because I felt my focus was better spent on other things. Unfortunately, community college was something that came as a struggle for me. While I excelled at my English courses and had barely managed my math courses, when the courses I dreaded arrived, my GPA dropped significantly and I made the decision to quit.

I remember feeling like a failure for being unable to get a proper college education. My plan had always been to attend community college and transfer to a university to get my B.S. for whatever film degree I decided to pursue. Instead I was twenty-one with nothing to show from my three years in community college, and no job. But I didn’t want to fail again, I wanted to achieve something. That was when I really threw myself into my writing. For years, all I had was a notebook on my phone with dozens and dozens of story ideas. Some movies, some shows, and a lot of books. Some were barely a concept, while others were more fleshed out. I had first chapters, and some even second chapters for most of them. But even after five years, Archaic remained to be the story I had spent the most time on. I decided that I had to finish it, and I would write my first book, even if the result was bad.

In 2019, I had my first draft at 115,000 words, split into a total of eighteen chapters. With the money I had saved up, I hired a freelance editor to look at my story. I knew I would have to rewrite a lot, but it didn’t matter as long as I could improve the story. Three months later, the editor returned my manuscript with a lot of information on what to cut, what to change, and what the strengths of my story were. To my surprise, the scenes she praised were all the moments which captured the mystery/suspense in the story. I cut a lot from my story, added in missing details, and did A LOT of research. I learned enough about Archaic language, old architecture, and Irish slang to fry my brain on more than one occasion. But I managed to end up with a 102,000 word manuscript I was proud of. All that was left was to get my story into the world.

There was a lot that happened in between. I started an online store with my mom, started making hand painted and handcrafted items, whatever I could to make some extra money.

Publishing research was something I had done years before just in case. I knew if I wanted to my book to be published by a large company, I needed a literary agent. Like any creative field, big companies won’t even glance your way without representation. I knew I needed a synopsis, and a query letter. While writing the query letter was easy, I struggled with the synopsis. How people are able to condense 100,000 words to a single page is beyond me. That was when I decided to hire another freelance writer to write my synopsis. When I did, she offered a quote for both the synopsis, and to proofread my manuscript, and I immediately hired her.

Finally with my manuscript finished, and my synopsis written, it was time to submit to agents. I started with local agents, but was quickly rejected by both. That was when I subscribed to a website called Query Tracker. When you see the articles, the interviews, the stories on social media about the author who never gave up hope, they’re nothing like the experience of the ones who actually never get their chance. I had read about JK Rowling being rejected by 12 publishers. I saw how Stephenie Meyer sent fifteen queries and was rejected by most of them, but got lucky with one who wanted to read her story.

I submitted to a total of 41 agents and was rejected by every single one of them. By number 28, I was sick of the form rejection every single agent seemed to share, the words that continued to eat away at whatever hopes I had. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is the right fit for me.” It wasn’t that I had expected them to love my story, but that I had hoped that just one would give me a reason for why my story wasn’t the “right fit”. I would have preferred just one negative reply so I could at least know what I was doing wrong. By number 35 I was ready to quit, and that’s really what I did. With six more queries still pending replies, I knew there was no agent who would accept the fantasy novel. Maybe it was that my book wasn’t interesting to them, but I knew my chances were already slim simply because the genre I had chosen to write. When evert agent wishlist requests romance, YA, historical romance, and LGBT stories, you start to realize that most agents are probably reading the words “contemporary fantasy” then turning away without a second glance. I considered writing a different book, one that fell into a popular genre. I already had a fantasy/sci-fi story with an LGBTQ main character, and I also had a YA Fantasy novel in progress. Perhaps it was time to appeal to the current fiction trends. But I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from my first book. I knew there was only one thing I could do. Self publish.

Through my publishing research I had learned that Barnes and Noble and Ingramspark both had easy self publishing programs. I got to work preparing everything. I designed my cover on my ipad, asked my cousin who is a photographer if she could take my head shots, and formatted my manuscript to the right size. On a whim, I decided to release the book on my birthday which was only two months away, and barely managed to release it on the night of my birthday party. At twenty-six, I had finally managed to get my book into the world. Now I’m working hard to promote it and continue to write Eric and Neil’s story as well as the other stories I always dreamed of reading.