I honestly never thought these books would get published.

 

For one thing, they took me eleven years to write, then another year to find the right publishing company to take them on. Add in a year apiece for editing too, and you're looking at thirteen years from start to finish. There were days when I hated the story so much that I wanted to burn the entire thing and scatter the ashes in running water to make sure it wouldn't come back. Only, the characters refused to let me.

 

The original idea for the Star-Crossed series was based on a dream I had in high school. It was one of those vivid dreams that my best story ideas come from, about a girl named Joan Louise, a boy named Lee, his brother Claude, their dog Fear, who could see the future, and a strange man with mysterious powers who was after them all. When I first wrote it down, it was a 48 page short story. However, while I loved the concept, it felt like it was missing something. So, instead of publishing it the way it was, I sat on it, until, one morning ten years later, a girl with angry brown eyes and wild wavy hair appeared on my couch while I was working out and asked the question that would change my life forever.

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"What if Joan Louise wasn't in that mysterious stranger's sights because of Lee? What if she was the latest in a long line of women who were cursed because their ancestor fell in love with the wrong person? And what if I, her great-granddaughter, decided to change all that?"

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The Star-Crossed series is a story about a lot of things. How the myths, fairy tales, and legends we know are all entwined at their roots. Love, the different ways it can affect us, and how everyone's happily ever after doesn't necessarily look the same. However, it's mostly a story written by one angry girl who felt she didn't have a voice about another angry girl who is tired of not having power over her own life, and who decides to take that power back, even if it costs her everything.

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Writing Cather's story was, in a way, a healing of my soul voice. By giving her permission to speak out against the gods, I was giving myself permission to speak about the thing I had battled silently for so long: my fear of loving someone. Of trusting someone enough to let them into my life. Of giving so much of my heart and soul to someone that I risked losing everything, including who and what I was. And, like Cather, these books have been a part of my own personal journey toward finding a way to face that fear.

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When I was seventeen, I was told I would never be able to have children. For the next five years from the time I got up off that examination table, I lived with the feeling that I wasn't good enough. Not good enough to be a wife. After all, who would want me? Not good enough to love. I would only end up hurting whoever I was with. Not even good enough to be a normal woman. I was damaged goods. My heart was broken before I even learned how to use it. I battled with depression. I was angry all the time. An abusive relationship in college led to a series of other bad relationships, and I spiraled downward, turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms as a way to make it through the day. I had no one to turn to.

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Until, God saved me.

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It wasn't cataclysmic by biblical standards. There was no disembodied voice coming from a burning bush. No doves came down from heaven, and no magical star shone in the sky. Just two little pink lines on a test strip, and then two more after that, and two more after that. But I swear I heard the cries of a thousand warriors, and a still, small voice in my ear whispered, "Don't give up. You have something to fight for."

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The way has not been easy, and the end is still a long ways off. My health is back. I severed the poisonous, destructive ties I had attached to myself. I had my child, a beautiful, healthy daughter, and she teaches me something new every day. I still experience bouts of depression and feelings of not being good enough, although now they're coupled with anxiety. My armor is battered and worn from rocks thrown by all of the naysayers who say I can't do this. That I am going to fail because I am young and a girl and single. But I soldier on, because they are wrong. And because I love her, my daughter, in a way that I had never imagined would be possible, with all of my heart and soul and mind and breath.

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Cather, too, had a hard road to travel. The death of a loved one. The betrayal of another. Discovering that everything she thought was true was a lie. Choosing to take back control over her destiny, even when it meant sacrificing her heart and soul in the process. Putting others before herself. Owning up to her weaknesses, and learning how to turn them into strengths. And between the lines of her story, buried so deep I didn't even realize they were there at first, were questions I had never dared to ask, but needed to. Lessons I didn't see coming, and maybe even a little bit of a wish for what might be if I dared to believe it could be true.

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In a way, this book is a farewell to the sad, angry girl I used to be, although I don't think she will ever truly leave me. Yet it is also a letter I wrote to the stronger, more capable woman I am becoming, every word an encouragement to keep going. While there is nothing specific about myself or any of my experiences in Cather's story, there are similarities, bits and pieces of me that blend with her in a way that I am coming to learn is an inescapable part of writing. My stories are a part of me, so it makes sense that a part of me would be left behind when I pen them on the page. Fantasy has always been a haven for me, one where I can release all of my pain without fear of judgement or consequences. Yet this has never been more true than with the Star-Crossed series. While it is, first and foremost, a love story, filled with adventure, vengeful deities, and mythical monsters, it is also a treasure trove of hidden secrets and confessions. Some of them are Cather's. Others are mine.

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Writing this series was like exhaling a breath that I had been holding for far too long. And while it will always be more than just a story to me, it was also the most epic journey I have ever experienced. I hope that readers are as enchanted by the magic in these pages as I was, caught in a spell that I never wanted to end.