(Feel free to skip ahead to what you want to read)
What's new with Ashleigh?
This past weekend, I participated in an event on one of my writing servers where members asked questions about my (no so much anymore) recent release. I have decided to share those answers with you over the next few weeks. Since this book is suitable for both middle grade and young adults, I am answering the same questions in both newsletters. If you have already read this interview, feel free to skip down to your YA freebies and deals.
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Where were your greatest struggles, and how did you overcome them? |
Fantasy is a new genre for me, so that was really hard. But beyond that, I had a few other challenges.
Unlike my other stories, I started this with an outline. It wasn’t very detailed, but I had an idea of what I wanted to happen and when. I wanted each chapter to end in a cliffhanger, something that would have the readers wanting to read just "one more chapter". While I didn't necessarily stick to my chapter divisions, I was proud to at least get all the key story beats in. But that does't mean I didn’t have problems.
The first was the darkness. When I wrote my outline, I knew that something bad would happen that would set everything in motion. I literally wrote “the bad thing happens”. When I got to that point in my draft, I was like, uh, now what? I kept playing with the idea of a plague but I had done something similar in some other work and wanted something with a more fantasy feel. So I somehow came up with the darkness.
Then I had to figure out what caused it. That, of course, was a future me problem. Until the chapter where Eamon learns what caused the darkness and how to stop it. This related to my second hard part: my magic system.
That was another future me problem. Somewhere during the early chapters, I got the idea that everyone has magic to some degree, but there are some who can work it stronger. It wasn’t until I was trying to explain the darkness that I really developed my magic system and identified what made Eamon different from everyone else.
I still remember the day I figured it all out. (I was drafting while sitting at the Y, which is where I am right now!) I remember being so ecstatic that I had solved that problem.
Do you have a question you would like me to answer?
Reply to this email and I will answer it in a future email.
Hartfield Chronicles
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