Hello, Feyre Darling

It all begins with an idiotic boast.

“I can write a book like this,” I say aloud. “It’s not even very good.”

My cousin, a book editor, rolls her eyes. We’ve been friends as long as she’s been alive, even though I’m more than a decade older.

“Seriously. How hard can it be?”

The funny thing is, I remember that exact conversation in November 2020. We were in my upstairs bookshelf area, and it was the afternoon. She was wearing a Meredith College sweatshirt. I remember writing that first chapter— my brilliant begining was a very standard romantasy retelling of Rapunzel with multiple suitors, similar to “The Selection”.

I remember the weeks that followed, finishing one chapter at a time, and her telling me that the characters were boring and this had all been done before.

I remember her telling me, “Read this one. If you can write like this, you’ll make millions of dollars,” and handing me ACOTAR. I recall being mindblown, swept away by the world and the characters and the story and the romance… highlighting and annotating. Then throwing away my entire 35k words I’d already written because it was just so bad.

I remember listening to a song that forever changed my life, the song that made me realize my female main character, after being locked in a tower, was not a sunshiney girl who would easily fall in love with a golden haired hero. [That song was Behind the Mask by Ivy & Gold, btw]

But you know what’s weird? The thing I cannot remember, no matter how hard I’ve tried, is the title of the book that started it all.

Sorry about that.