Did You Know?

Fascinating but completely useless facts about how Forbidden Sea came to be.

- One day two darling little girls came into the library where I work asking for mermaid books. They were very disappointed to discover how few mermaid books we had for them to check out. Later, I got to thinking about this lack of mermaid stories and I started imagining what kind of mermaid I would want to write about. The mermaid in my story came to me as a fully formed character, but it was a while before I could find a story plot to do her justice. Forbidden Sea is the only story I've written where a character came to me before the story did.

- As a child, I used to love drawing mermaids with fantastic outfits I had designed myself. When I began imagining a merworld for my book, I found myself going back to this original idea and incorporated it into my story.

- The earliest plot for the Forbidden Sea didn't have a mermaid in it at all. The story was going nowhere until I remembered my mermaid character who still had no story to star in. After that the manuscript practically wrote itself.

- The first draft of this book took nine months to write. If you have ever tried to write a book while working full time, you will know how fast that is.

-Two publishing houses request to see this manuscript. Orchard Books was a little bit faster in getting back to me.

-It took two years for my publisher to actually make an offer on this manuscript.

-It took two more years to revise and publish.

-Contrary to popular belief, authors have no say in what their book cover will look like. I was very nervous until I saw Mr. Bagshaw's beautiful final work.

Completed Cover

And here it is in all it's glory. If you look to the left you will see what the final artwork for my book's cover looks like. It came out so stunningly beautiful. I should be seeing a copy of the first pass of printed pages within the next few weeks. I can't wait to see how it will look all completed. I am almost done with the rough draft of the sequel. (Only two more chapters to go) Then comes the hard work of editing and polishing. Of course, it is possible that if this first book doesn't sell they won't want the sequel, in which case, I and my writer's group will be the only ones who know what happens next. (Raspberry, I promise to send you a copy, if that happens) The other story is coming along nicely as well. I can never seem to limit myself to one story at a time. They all team up on me, demanding a life of their own.