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How The Ever Series Came About

After many, many years of procrastination, writer’s block, and making up excuses of all kinds why I couldn’t or shouldn’t write a book, I sat down and finished my first-ever full-length novel in 2008.

I had just rediscovered paranormal romance, and what I loved most was the escape it provided. In high school, I had been a big fan of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, and I can still remember starting Interview with the Vampire as I sat on the quad at lunch. Back then, I read during pretty much every spare second.

While Interview had been written before I was born, it felt very timeless to me. The romance was so dark and intricately linked to this paranormal world Rice had created, and I just felt swallowed up by it. I could see the plantation in my head, and I fell in love with Rice’s tortured protagonist, Louis de Pointe du Lac.

At the same time, I really liked the idea of telling a story from a high-school-age perspective, because I remember being in high school—and really, really wanting something epic to happen that would transport me into another world altogether.

So, during the summer of 2008, on a lark, I made myself a deal: after years of not finishing so much as a short story, I would finish a novel in sixty days or less. With a playlist that I am still epically nostalgic about, and to my surprise, I finished a first draft in two months. It was a blast. In fact, it was so much fun that I was addicted. I started writing the sequels to that first book, and during that time, I also started sending out query letters to literary agency after agency … and got rejected over and over. Eventually, I got discouraged and put the book aside, and the sequels died as well.

Then, in January 2010, I started a character study, again focusing on a character I could relate to. A girl whose adolescence had been hijacked by her parents’ acrimonious divorce. A girl who was wounded by her father’s abandonment. A girl who never felt at home where she grew up. A quiet girl who read too much and was overly sensitive to the world around her--because she knew what people were thinking about her. A girl who wanted a fresh start.

On a streak, I wrote page after page with no plan or outline. Then I wrote the classroom scene … where reality goes out the window and Wren is left to wonder about her sanity.

And that is how For Ever, originally titled Wren, was born.

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