…suggests that something has the potential to go Horribly Wrong before my story sees the public, and so I have told barely anyone (my husband and my mom, and of course, you, my invisible audience). I believe this dates from a Formative Event in my past: when I was fifteen I wrote a fantasy novel. It was atrocious, but no more so than many things written by adults. A publishing house expressed an interest and I had my very first business lunch with two wonderful editors. They declared bankruptcy not a week later. I’m sure it wasn’t as simple as all that, but being fifteen, I felt like some kind of leper of doom. This feeling was dispelled when the editors recommended to me another house (who rejected me kindly, and did not declare bankruptcy, restoring my faith in my own smallness). Why do I tell this story? Possibly to illustrate to myself the fact that I’ve always had a magical-thinking thing going on when it comes to my writing. Although I believe–strike that, I know–that I’m good, I feel that I also need omens, gods, runes, cards on my side; that anything that occurs around my writing is Fated […]

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