So... here I am starting a blog. I do love writing so this should be fun! I've had a few other "journals" in the past which has equipped me to handle writing embarrassing information.
First up! If you have issues reading this don't fret, I'll be getting a new laptop soon enough. Unfortunately ol' Betsy (my old laptop) has decided to periodically cause the shift button to fail, meaning writing a novel has been rather difficult.. unless we're starting a new non-capitalization fad.
So.. who am I?
I'm a writer who has spent most of my life writing. Throughout grade school, high school and college I've taken writing classes and been part of critique groups. I've always loved the written word, because my imagination is 100 times better than movies. I remember as a child I use to sit in my math class (one of my least favorite) and write stories. Usually they involved fantasy, as I was a real magic lover. I'd sit there scribbling out story after story, writing back stories for the characters of my stories and giving them immeasurable problems to overcome.
Into college I went, as I had a love for programming computers. I see it much the same as writing a story. You use words to create something from nothing. Love them both!
So in around 2008 I got pregnant with my first child and realized that if anything ever happened to me, all the stories I'd created in my mind but never written out would never be shared with my child. So I started writing the stories down.. hence came Faiyth.
Faiyth was born from an idea I had for an orphaned girl who's father was a bad man. My question was, how would a daughter handle it if her father was an evil man? Would she worry the evil had passed down? Would she be able to fight her father? Would she be able to kill her father if it became necessary?
That's when I started writing Journey to Magic (which later became Web of Lies). I wanted to start the story with her completely naive of who she was and where she'd come from, so that's when the idea of this being a trilogy began. In the first book she'd discover she had magic, in the second she'd realize her father was the most dangerous sorcerer known to her world and in the third she'd have to kill him before he killed her.
I was very excited to write these stories so I sat down on my days off and wrote like crazy! Then my daughter came (Kylie) and my free days got fewer but I still wrote every day at lunch. It took me about a year but I finished Faiyth's first book. Right away I started the second because it was going to be the funnest to work with. The second one is where she'd realize her father was evil! That one I had half done within 3 months.
Inspiration for Faiyth was hard to find. I imagined that Faiyth would likely have signs in the first book of the evil that was passed down from her father. I decided Faiyth would be flawed. Her upbringing as an outcast orphan would make her life take a different path but that she would have the same components that had turned her father into a dangerous killer. His upbringing as a spoiled, egotistical first son to an influential family took his path where it did, but Faiyth's path would be far different. The issue was that if things didn't go PERFECTLY she'd end up her father. During the story there are two extremes of Faiyth, extreme innocence and fury. The idea for this came from my father who is bipolar. I imagine Faiyth would have the same issues in that she would have no control over the evil darkness that was inside her, but that she was basically a very sweet person. On occasion (two/three times in the first book) that inability to control her magic would cause her to hurt people around her.
Next I had to decide what would happen to Faiyth in the first book. It's be a pretty boring story if all she did was learn she had magic.. THE END.. nope, it needed more than that. So I decided she might hear of the evil sorcerer (who later ends up her father) in the first book and then possibly accidentally meet him. Now she'd have no idea who he was, but he'd know her immediately since he'd raped her mom and then later tracked her mom and her down in an attempt to kill his child. He doesn't want competition after all. Any child of his was bound to be as strong as he is.
Then I decided that if her father (evil sorcerer dude) knew who she was right away then wouldn't anyone else who had known her mother? So that's when I decided maybe Faiyth's father Teron had a sister. A woman who had grown up in his shadow. He was very powerful and their parents dooted on him, she was jealous and hated him in response. This sister would see Faiyth and know right away that she was Teron's kid. She looks just like him. Then there was a second person who would know as well. The man who was married to her mother and thought Faiyth was his daughter, Arkwin.. until he later hired someone to drown her. Why you ask? Because when Teron came to kill Faiyth (having found out the woman he raped was having a baby) he ended up killing Faiyth's mom in her place. Teron never got a chance to kill Faiyth since the authorities came before he could. Arkwin realized that Teron had come to kill Faiyth and wished he'd succeeded because if Teron had, Arkwin's wife would still be alive. Besides, looking at Faiyth he realized that there was no way the baby was his. She looked just like his wife, but she was also WAY too big for being a 3 month premature baby. So realizing his wife cheated on him, then lied.. and then was later killed over a baby that wasn't even his.. he decides to kill the baby and tell everyone Teron killed his wife and his daughter.. and that's how the first book ends.
Way to spice up "she learns she has magic" eh? That's what I thought! It's weird how a book just 'comes'. Like you sit down and start writing and WHAM, the story is just there without even consciously thinking about it. It comes out like it's alive and it's just using your fingers to find purchase on our world.
Anyway, back to writing my next novel.
AK Madison
