A book, a book, we have a book, and we need no more book

I guess most kids who really love to read think they'll write a book someday. I had a few fits of inspiration as a grade-schooler, where I'd start writing about orphans or some such, and dream of writing the best book ever. I could get them (the orphans) into some dire situations. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't ever get them out again. And thus I discovered that I was not meant to be an author of books.

In high school I started to get serious about poetry, and I found that lots easier. Shorter, at any rate, and less thorny! My dad would say, "But what's it about?" and I would sigh and roll my eyes and say if he didn't get it I couldn't explain. (Sorry, Dad. Wish I had another chance at that. Not that I'd still be able to explain much, but I could be nicer about it.) I had a few poems published and it was cool—satisfying, you know? Just to know I wrote something and then someone else liked it. But who really reads poetry? No one, that's who.

I had some essays published too—things I'd polished and crafted, not utter drivel like half the things I write here on this blog—but I was still pretty sure I'd never have the patience and/or fortitude (remember those orphans?) to write a real book. And that's about how things stood several years ago when one of my very best friends emailed me and said, "Hey, want to write a book together?" And because she is one of my very best friends, and we grew up together and she tends to make me reach for my Best Self, I said what I would have said to NO ONE else. I said, "Well…okay."

I really only agreed to make Rachael (perhaps you know Rachael…lucky you, if you do, and I've also mentioned her from time to time on this very blog) happy. But there were various other factors which helped me not back immediately out of the idea. She had written a book already herself, which I'd helped her edit, so I had great faith in HER writing skills. And she let me read a manuscript two other friends of hers were writing together, and I thought…"Well. Maybe we could do that." And then she was just the right amount of encouraging and low-pressure. "Let's just try it for fun. If nothing comes of it, that's fine. We don't ever have to show it to anyone." Yep, I was pretty sure I'd never want to show it to anyone.

We brainstormed a bunch of ideas. We like fairy tale retellings (who doesn't?). We like Robin McKinley and Diana Wynne Jones and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. We've probably read, oh, 80% of the same books as each other. At any rate, I don't know who thought of it, but we had the idea of making an adaptation of one of our favorite Dickens books, Our Mutual Friend. (You should read it! And then see this wonderful miniseries.) And then we thought of adding in magic…because, why not? So we made an outline, sort of, and then we just started writing a scene here and a scene there. We wrote on a google document so we could edit each other's stuff, which we did so much that soon we didn't know which was which and whose was whose. Sometimes we'd both be on the doc together late at night, and we'd see each other's cursors typing along of their own ghostly accord, and we'd type silly messages to each other and then start laughing so hard that our husbands would wake up to ask us what on earth was going on.

It was just over three years ago we started. We wrote fairly furiously for about 5 months, in stolen snatches of time, usually late at night but sometimes impatiently through dinner and interruptions or in early-morning quiet. And we not only wrote the book, but we finished it, amazingly. It changed so much from the original version that we couldn't fully rely on Dickens to get us out of the trouble we got our characters into—but somehow with each other as inspirer and editor and cheerleader and occasionally stern taskmaster—we eventually got them all out and into their happy endings where they belonged. 

And then we revised it, we sent it off to publishers, we waited, and we lived the rest of our lives. We had children. We sent children on missions. We visited each other across country borders. We were prevented from visiting each other across country borders. Rachael wrote a whole-nother (is that just a Utah-ism? or do other people say that?) book, our book got rejected by a couple publishers, we lost interest and re-gained interest, we gave it to readers, we gave it to our writing group, and we revised and revised and revised again. We were "practically done" for 6 more months of checking details, editing, SO many more details…

And now finally here we are. With a real book that we wrote with our own four hands. We love it. And you can buy it and read it yourself! If you want to, of course.

But I haven't told you the best part! The best part is that Sam, who we had hoped might maaaaybe have a tiny bit of time to just do the simplest quick drawing for our cover, or at least recommend one of his students to do it for us…Sam came through like the hero of every story, and painted us the most amazing and beautiful cover ever, AND did six interior illustrations which capture the Dickens mood perfectly. I'll post about them in a couple days. (And he also did our about-the-author portraits in the same style.) But they increase the value of our book a thousand-fold (and we would never in a million years have been able to afford him, in the usual way of things, so we are pathetically grateful that he wanted to be part of this project!).

Here is the link on Amazon. Just in time for Christmas. :) There is a paperback and even a hardcover version! We're so happy with how it turned out. And we hope some people will read it, and like it.

https://www.amazon.com/Complementary-Magic-Marilyn-Nielson/dp/1777138752/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1638558725&sr=8-3