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.