The History of an Author in Progress

I don't know exactly when work on Eversong began. It started as most books do, as an idea. I wanted to see a girl very much like I am now, transported into a mystical world of magic, and fantastic creatures, where she becomes a hero, and gets everything she ever dreamed of.

My first major problem was who is it, and how does she get there? Well, character creation has long been a favourite past-time of mine. She became Victoria Crawford, an average, slightly overweight girl who doesn't run with the popular crowd, but instead cuts her own path through originality. She likes foreign things; music, food, clothes. She's something of an outcast due to her weight, and interest in books.

This of course changes when she discovers a small, leather-bound novel by the name of Eversong in a local used bookstore. Through the magic of this book, she finds herself IN Eversong, amongst the characters she's just been reading about.

Sounds a bit like the Never-Ending Story, doesn't it?

Similarities end there, however, because she soon finds herself immersed in the turmoils of the world, fighting desperately to save it from the scourge of - for lack of a better immediate word - dark elves.

As of the creation of this blog, Eversong is still just an unfinished collection of outlines, character notes, and a childish map (for I am many things, but a cartographer I am not). The finalities of Eversong will include:

• Several complete languages, encompassing Elvish, Dark Elvish, Winged, Fae, and Saurian, to name just a few
  
• Three complete novels, spanning the entirety of Vicky's adventures there
  
• A better map
  
• Things that even I'm not aware of at the moment.
  

As a writer surrounded by artistically talented friends, I constantly find myself at a loss to describe the troubles I go through trying to get words out, and they to describe issues with drawing to me. I haven't the foggiest what it takes to visualize something in your mind, and then take a pencil to hand and recreate that image on paper. But I've been writing from the time I was able to form letters, and find myself toiling beneath a constant barrage of runaway characters, side-plots, setting changes, and a host of other problems.

My goal for the first novel of the Eversong Trilogy, (which I realize needs a name of it's own - I refer here to the Memory Sorrow and Thorn Trilogy, by the incredible Tad Williams; the first book is The DragonBone Chair, the second is The Stone of Farewell, and the third is To Green Angel Tower) is to have at the very least the first draft of the entire novel written by December 31st, 2009. It's at that time that I can begin hunting for all the other people a writer needs - a publisher, an editor, and an agent.

I'm extraordinarily lucky to be vague acquaintances with the lovely Sarah Rees Brennan, from Ireland, whose first book, the Demon's Lexicon, is being published this summer. Through her journal, I have been able to read about the trials and tribulations she went through to get to this landmark point in her life.

I had originally wanted to have all three books written to at least the first draft before beginning my hunt for the trappings of a true author, but I'm incredibly impatient by nature. If I find someone willing to buy the book, then they should be okay with waiting until the next two are written (I believe that this is the way Miss Rees-Brennan is writing, herself).

With that said, I end this first entry to what I hope will one day be a blog that is flocked to by my adoring fans. To you, future readers of my book, I salute and thank you, and urge you to leave comments.

I am, as all authors must be, incredibly susceptible to the flattery of people who like my work.