My Villain (Author) Origin Story

It all started with Animal Crossing and the pandemic.

It was March 2020, and we were entering a new era.

These were the days of "social distancing," "quarantine," and "an introvert homebody's dream." Tiger King, virtual D&D, quoting Cardi B's 'Coronavirus!' to each other all day - and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Not one to let the video game FOMO last, I picked up a copy and sold my soul bell by bell to Tom Nook.

Life was smooth sailing. In between days of catching fish and selling garbage to Timmy and Tommy, I was also DMing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for my husband and in-laws, which we'd moved to doing over Zoom. This campaign was Descent into Avernus. While my husband Matt is usually our forever DM, I'd had a story brewing in my mind since 2017 when I created my first D&D character, a paladin named Ara. I volunteered to DM this campaign to get experience so I could run a homebrew campaign set in the world I'd been creating with my husband for years and years through other campaigns we'd played and characters we'd created.

And then the unthinkable happened: I tested positive for COVID. Because this was in the early days of the pandemic, no one knew what to do or what to expect. I had volunteers calling me every couple of days to track my symptoms and ask about who I'd met with. My parents and in-laws got calls saying they'd been exposed to the virus from me. It was a lawless time, and on top of it all, I got hit hard. While I wasn't hospitalized, I credit that to my husband's undying support in making sure I didn't have to do anything - because I couldn't do anything. Walking from the bedroom to the living room felt like sprinting miles. A task as simple as unloading the dishwasher wiped me out for the entire day. I'd reserve all my energy so that I could nurse my daughter to bed at night. We lived in a second-floor condo, and I didn't have the strength to walk down the stairs, so I was trapped inside. I couldn't DM for our Descent into Avernus campaign, because talking for too long would make it impossible to breathe.

Waiting in a sketchy quarantine tent for an x-ray of my lungs.

With nothing else to do, I threw myself into Animal Crossing. I'd paid off Nook the Crook, and it was time to create a picture-perfect island. True to my obsession, I decided to model it after the primary city in the story/campaign I'd been developing: Lakehaven.

It was two months before I tested negative for Covid and had the strength to leave my house. During that time, I worked. I payed an obscene amount of bells, star fragments, and Nook tickets to get Raymond on my island. I also fell in love.

Finally, I was ready to share! Friends, family, and strangers looking to buy turnips came to visit my island, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't wracked with unrelenting imposter syndrome. There was no area I was self-conscious of. It wasn't perfect, but I'd created something I was so proud of that I was happy to let anyone see it. I hosted meteor shower events and turnip exchanges, and the whole thing was a vibe.

It was small, silly, and a little stupid, but it awoke something in me. I'd overcome my imposter syndrome with an Animal Crossing island, and I wanted to do it again! This time with the story I'd been developing for years that was bursting from my skull, ready to be told.

Writing was a bit more difficult than creating a fake island.

I'd done plenty of forms of writing in my life, including a brief stint of creative writing when I was a wee tweenage lass (a universal experience, I think). I enjoyed journalism in high school and academic writing throughout college, so I thought creative writing would be just as intuitive. It was not. But Matt, my forever supportive husband, was just as invested in my writing journey as I was. He'd taken Brandon Sanderson's writing class in college, and he'd kept all of his notes. We watched Sanderson's online lectures, and he helped me brainstorm quite possibly the most comprehensive, detailed outline I never hope to create again. We spent hours working out a magic system that worked for my story, and even more hours picking the perfect names for the characters (most of them crossed over from our D&D campaigns, much to my relief - if I could name everyone Mert, my life would be so much easier).

From an early, early draft.

I hadn't been afraid to share my AC:NH island with anyone. There wasn't much vulnerability there - it's a fake, animated island. But I knew if I wanted to get my WIP to a place where I'd be proud to share it with anyone, I needed to get some constructive feedback on it, and that meant showing it to people other than my husband. He gave me excellent feedback on the story as a whole, and in my annotations, I'll note which ideas were his (he saved many a character from an untimely death), but I needed feedback on my writing. So in November, I did my first NaNoWriMo.

The good news was, I actually won! I wrote 50k words in a month. I also ended up putting almost everything I wrote into my deleted scenes folder, but that's where basically all of my first draft lives 😅. The better news was, I made other writer friends! Writing in a vacuum was lonely and at times discouraging. Writing with people was exhilarating and motivated me to fight through the writer's block and imposter syndrome.

I found a permanent writing group a few months after NaNo ended, and not only did we share our love of writing, we all became fast friends and are to this day. My book wouldn't be even remotely close to what it is today without all the things I learned from them, and their patience with reading draft after draft as it slowly but surely grew from a "Burn it With Fire" draft to "I Stayed Up Past My Bedtime Reading This" novel. In the future, I'll probably have a post about everything each member taught me, but suffice to say, my number one piece of advice to any new writer is to get yourself a writing group, make writer friends, and get ready to learn by reading your friends' work.

At Long Last...

Building my Animal Crossing island took 2 months and researching how to do path codes while in a near-comatose haze. Writing and editing Soultappers: Dawn of the Darkest Day took two and a half years. And unlike my AC:NH island, I don't think the imposter syndrome will ever go away with writing and publishing. There's still so much to learn! With building an island, it was as simple as searching "bridge ideas" on Pinterest. With writing, there's Save the Cat, MICE Quotient, the endless argument of how to use em-dashes, and 'are streetlamps too modern for a high fantasy?' Where I felt thrilled when strangers visited my island and rained praises, getting emails from my beta readers telling me they stayed up all night reading my draft usually gave me a reaction of shock and kind of a sheepish 'really?!?!?!' grin.

Whatever the case, one thing I am unequivocally proud of is the work I've put into becoming a writer. It's a craft I've enjoyed learning about, I've loved making friends in the reading and writing community, and I am thrilled to be able to share the stories that brew in my mind.

If you enjoy reading "Dawn of the Darkest Day," please subscribe to my newsletter, where I'll be sharing deleted scenes, bonus POVs, and other goodies in between novels. And if you REALLY like it, share it with your friends and family! (Especially your grandmother who has a thing for toxic, morally grey men).