The Origins of the Windemeres are Shrouded in Dense Nagging

Overthinking: something Bob never, ever does.
He does, however, frequently overlick.
This leads to hairballs.

It's hard to believe it's been two weeks since my first novel came out, which makes it sound like "The Golden Feather" discovered its sexual identity, so perhaps that's why people say "released," which sounds like it just got out of the big house after a 20-year stint for armed robbery, so maybe I should just say "got published," but that sounds like this magical thing that happened sort of all at once, when in fact there was a year-long trail of teeny tiny milestones, sort of like reflectors in the middle of the highway, and the only all-at-once thing that happened was the moment I looked up and saw the giant headlights of Amazon with the words, "Status: available" etched into the grille.

So, yeah. I made a book.

The questions I've been most frequently asked are:

1. How long did it take to write?
2. Where did you get the idea?

The adorable face (and blue hair)
of persistence.

Both questions have the same answer: Betty.

In October 2016, Betty was obsessed with fairy tales. We bought books of them at Half Price Books from countries all over the world. Her favorite is a dark green hardbound collection of both Grimm and Andersen (she prefers Grimm). We read those stories night after night. After night.

One night, after yet another round of Grimm, Betty had an idea: why couldn't I write her a fairy tale? All it needed was a princess and some talking animals. Could I have it by tomorrow?

Now, I had not written anything longer than a 10-page short story at that point. And I hadn't even written a short story in a couple of years. All I'd written were poems, and those were generally short. Really short. I've written dozens with fewer than eight lines.

However, it was an interesting challenge, and Betty is a world class nagger, in the manner perfected by youngest children, so I accepted. During my lunch hour the next day, I started sketching out Betty's fairy tale. The princess was, of course, named Bettina (of Windemere), and she had a pet leopard named Malalah, because Betty's fondest ambition is to own 200 cats and a goat, which also explains why the wise nanny goat Amalthea charged into the book later on.

Where's that chapter, Mother Dear?
You HAVE finished it, haven't you?

After half an hour or so, I realized I had a problem: what I'd written wasn't a fairy tale like those we'd been reading. In fact, it was more like the Cliff's Notes summary of a fairy novel. 

Well, I reasoned, we'll probably both get bored before I finish a book anyway, so why not start and see? So that night, after everyone was in bed, I wrote Chapter 1 and read it to Betty the next day. She immediately begged for Chapter 2. Which led, after many, many nights, to another couple dozen chapters. She'd bounce up and down for the suspenseful parts, cackle at the funny parts, cover her eyes when Bettina was in danger (especially if the danger was embarrassing herself), and squeal with delight when something wonderful happened.

Every night she was with me, she'd beg for a chapter, and most of those nights she'd have one, if only because I couldn't bear to disappoint her. Reading the drafts out loud made problems with pacing, voice, and cadence easy to spot, and I could see my audience reacting (or not) as I read, so usually after reading the chapter aloud, she would go to bed and I would immediately start editing what I'd just written.

Betty unwrapping the box of proof copies
of "The Golden Feather." 

The final chapter was finished at 1 a.m. Christmas morning, just eight weeks after I began. Betty (and her siblings) were to go to their dad's house for a week after Christmas lunch, and Betty wanted to hear the end of her book before she went.

Now, writing anything that fast means there's a lot of editing to be done on the back end, and that is for sure what happened with "The Golden Feather." I went to several workshops at The Writing Barn, each resulting in extensive rewriting. The first and last chapters in particular are almost unrecognizable from that first draft.  There followed developmental editing, then copy editing, then proofreading, then more proofreading.

But the book would never have been there to edit in the first place had it not been for the daily, persistent, refrain of, "Do you have another chapter, Mom? Do you? Do you? WHY NOT?????" of my youngest child and most relentless taskmaster, Betty.