2015.
So long ago. And not that long ago. The Unraveling was the first of my books that I chose to release. I began writing it in 2012, a flow of words that reached over 200K. Critique partners suggested I break it into shorter novels and form a ‘serialized novel.’
Here’s my original promo when The Unraveling released June 23, 2015.
In celebration, I’m sharing three insider tidbits about the novel!
First:
The story came to me in a dream, as many novels do. The girl was looking for someone she hadn’t met. She heard voices and followed them into a shed on a farm, then knocked over a pile of dusty, wooden apple crates.
I knew this shed on this farm. Family friends own this orchard and I lived there for many months two separate times, once when my parents moved and the friends offered to let me stay with them to complete my senior year of high school. The second time, I had moved back into the area to take a job. I knew the house, the outbuildings, the orchard, the kitchen garden, the cemetery next door and the walk down into town where we shopped and friends lived in houses along the streets.
It was easy for me to imagine the setting. But who was the girl? Artist Annmar Masterson came into my head soon enough, a proper Victorian girl barely making ends meet and plagued by lecherous client. Writing Annmar’s story, I also found the boy she overheard but couldn’t find because the building was magicked to keep out strangers. Daeryn Darkcoat was her opposite in most ways, a shape-shifting European Polecat who had been hired on as night guard after witnessing the horrific death of his lifemate.
The farm, Wellspring Collective, eventually landed in Blighted Basin, a hidden valley in the Peaks District of Victorian England. The time became the autumn harvest in September 1868.
If you’d like to read more about how I developed the world of Blighted Basin, author Jean Lee conducted a fabulous interview on my research for her blog, Jean Lee’s World on September 20, 2018. Yikes, that was also long ago!
Second:
I’ve never lived on a farm, but my dad and his sister did with their parents. My grandfather, Herb Wanrow, owned and sold steam engines in the 1910s to the 40s.
Aside from a family connection to steam engines, I was enamored with Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan series and wanted to write a steampunk story. Both of these caused me to use steam machines in The Unraveling, many of them of my own invention. Two of the stories, illustrated with photographs, are in two articles I wrote:
- Steampunk Lessons from a Family History on Sawmill Operation ~ Part One at History Undressed
- Steampunk Lessons from a Family History on Sawmill Operation ~ Part Two at History Undressed
Third:
In 2013, I drove across the country with my family and stayed at a KOA across from a Kansas farming museum. I took many photos of old machinery, dreaming of how I might use them in blogs for my eventual publication. My daughter made that happen, taking photos like this:
And photo-shopping them to this:
This anniversary wouldn’t be possible without my local RWA chapter’s self-publishing interest group. In fall 2014, our Maryland Romance Writer’s group began sharing research and experiences, and I was encouraged to indie publish my novels. A shout-out to these talented writers!
Readers also strongly encourage writers. One of my first reviews has stuck with me for five years, because the reader loved the world so much, she was ready to move in:
Even though Blighted Basin was new to me at the beginning of the book, only a few chapters in I found myself dreaming of living there, with my own room in the barn and my own role to play in the community. Very few writers can capture a made-up world so vividly!
Many thanks to Rosie, a twenty-something reader from England who won one of giveaway novels through Goodreads. Read other reviews–or add yours!–on Goodreads.
Right now, you can pick up The Unraveling for free on all retailers. Take note this is a serialized novel; the story continues in The Twisting and The Binding. The entire fantasy is bundled as a complete novel with character lists called The Luminated Threads on Amazon & Kobo.
And if I haven’t gone on long enough, here’s an excerpt of Annmar’s arrival in Chapter 7, which dropped the voices she heard to focus on her fears.
Wellspring was too intriguing. Everywhere Annmar looked, something popped into her mind. Things she was sure most business clients wouldn’t appreciate in an illustration.
Her drawing of the three-story stone house started out normal enough, but the structure altered under her pencil into an open-air pavilion with inviting cushioned wicker furniture. The surrounding old rowan trees reshaped into many-armed sentinels awaiting unwary intruders, their troops formed from the adjacent orchard trees. Beyond the farmyard’s spreading walnut tree, the long whitewashed outbuilding with its odd dormers changed into a parapeted fortification. The windmill and water tank transformed into clouds with cascades flowing into rivers between the fields.
What would the fields look like at night? At dawn? Seeing the sun rise over the fields with rows of crops planted in their complicated cross-work patterns? Oh, it would be a glorious race to catch the colors in the sky and the play of shadows over the textures of different plants. The thought made her pencil twitch even faster, and the lines on the page coalesced into an expansive view of field after field rolling over the hills, with something connecting them.
The pencil hung suspended above the page while she stared. Her focus blurred a moment, and part of her struggled to name what the other part drew—a fine network of lines, spider web-like, but underground, in the soil. They weren’t really lines, but tunnels. No, tubes…or, rather, roots.
Annmar nodded to herself. The delicate lines had to be roots. They crossed her page in a lacy pattern, weaving the countryside together into an orderly system that spoke of life, fertile and vibrant. The sense of it hadn’t occurred to her while sketching, but now, looking at the entire drawing, a shiver of excitement ran up her spine.
She drew a breath and glanced around the still-deserted yard. The farm smelled so good, too. A light flicked on in the fortifica—uh, the outbuilding.
“Aha. Someone has arrived.” Annmar slapped her book closed and jumped up, but her steps across the gravel drive slowed as every stone made itself known through her worn soles. By the time she picked her way to the building, dust clung to the uppers. Annmar sighed and stopped at the open double doors to brush the tops of her shoes clean. There. First impressions had to be good impressions.
She peered inside the building. To one side, workbenches holding tumbles of metal parts and hanging mechanic’s tools identified the area as a repair shop. Opposite, rolls of fencing, metal rods and bundles of wire surrounded the bottom of an old cast-iron spiral stair to the upper floor. From the layer of dirt and cobwebs, the stair wasn’t in use.
Deeper into the building lay more messy storage. This place was nothing like her sketched images of various chambers befitting the castle’s inhabitants. She shook her head. Why had that bit of whimsy struck? Like her nerves at Gapton, that nonsense wouldn’t serve her well in her new position. The cadence of voices rose and fell beyond the door. Mess or not, she’d announce herself to these people.
A few steps inside, movement caught her eye, small and dark like an airborne rock coming at her. Annmar ducked and stumbled. Blurs—birds—dove from the rafters, shrieking in a growing swirl at her head. With a cry, she threw up her hands to fend them off and dodged for the doorway.
The tumult of birds flew from the workshop and disappeared into the trees. Annmar panted in time to their quick wing movements. Had they meant to scare her, or had she scared them? She shook her head at the thought. “Wild animals. A rough farm. Why did I think this was a good idea?”
Nothing held her here, yet everything kept her from returning home. Her hand crept to her bodice and felt for the coins. Still there. Those in her waistband, too. She reached out to steady herself and knocked something that gave way.
A pile of wooden crates tipped in slow motion.
Thunk. Creak. Thunk. Creak. Bam.
Annmar jumped just as the crates landed, shooting up a cloud of fine powder. She covered her mouth and nose, but choked on air so thick its particles tickled her skin. A fit of coughing overcame her, making a few tears leak from the corners of her eyes. She dashed outside.
Leaning on the sun-baked wall, she gulped in clean air. A final cough cleared her throat, but a shake of her traveling skirt released more billowing dirt. She skittered aside.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. She couldn’t get this filthy in a week in Derby. Her carefully contrived first impression was lost, dreams of an independent shop drifting away with the dust she brushed from her shoulders and sleeves.
“Hello there,” called a woman behind her.
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