During freshman year of high school, I wrote my first novel during geometry class. Doing proofs drove me up the wall, so I wrote a thriller instead. The entire thing is composed in pink ink. It’s cheesy and horrible and embarrassing, but I finished the damn thing, which meant two things were true: I never learned geometry, and I realized there might be a future in this writing thing.

College came with a new set of challenges. I majored in English and history, and pissed off everyone in my writing seminars by turning in 10,000-word historical epics on the Bloody Sunday revolt and the Russian Revolution. One time, I branched out into a thriller based on the Anna Anderson story. Clearly, I had a one-track mind. If it didn’t involve epic shit, I wasn’t interested.

Girl, Interrupted

After college, life got messy. Working, living on my own, traveling – none of these things left room for writing. I did, however, go to Kenya, which was awesome. But I never forgot how much I loved books, writing, and royalty.

I didn’t get serious about writing until my late 20s. When I did, the first short story I submitted to a literary journal was about Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna of Russia…and it was accepted. I felt like the universe had given me a big green light. I was on the right path, finally!

Well, except when those dipsticks edited out the historical Easter egg in my story without telling me, changing one name and making my reference both incorrect and nonsensical. Also, one page in my story was printed twice, thus destroying all continuity and flow for the whopping ten people who probably ever read it. Thanks, staff of said literary journal who shall remain nameless.

A few years later, I went to grad school. I thought I’d get a teaching job with my master’s, but I’m the world’s biggest introvert so that was just stupid. I never actually wanted to teach. I just wanted to write. I thought I’d be the unicorn who wrote a book, got a fantastic book deal, and would escape the working world and magically be able to pay all my bills through writing.

Pfft. As if.

I wrote four books, all rejected by every agent and publisher who saw them. The ones who replied said I was clearly talented, but they couldn’t sell my work. All told, I got close to 1,000 rejections. If I weren’t stubborn as shit, I might have driven off a cliff and put an end to it right then and there. But I am stubborn as shit, so I kept going.

Besides, after grad school, I realized holy mother of God, I owe a lot of money. I got a real job to pay bills, and that’s where I am today. I wrote four more books, self-published everything I’d written, failed miserably at every aspect of marketing those books, and made zero money. I kid you not. My first check from Amazon was for $17 and change. My last Smashwords payment was $1.72.

Annus horibilis

If 1997 was it for the British royal family, 2017 was it for me. My confidence and happiness were both at the lowest levels they’d ever been. Some health and personal stuff went wrong, too, which felt like getting kicked in the metaphorical balls after being run over by a car. (Ironic note added later: getting hit by a car didn’t happen until 2018.)

I quit writing cold turkey.

Then I stepped back to figure out what the hell happiness even meant at age 40. Turns out, it meant researching stories about royalty and tiaras and eating mayonnaise out of the jar.

Without knowing what it would turn into, I bought a few books online. A few books turned into a buttload of books. I devoured information and, before I could stop, a plan formed in my head. I would tell the stories of these women, these amazing royal women. For them, I would try and silence the voice in my head telling me I was the shittiest marketer in the world and, good writer or not, nothing I did was ever going to amount to anything.

For these women, I would focus on telling the story and force everything else to fall away.

So I started writing Hilda’s story.

And everything else fell away.

What started out as a fun research project has become a full-blown obsession.

It sounds dramatic, but this obsession has changed the course of my life. After the non-stop soul-crushing rejection of my fiction career, I needed something to pull me out of the mire of self-loathing and depression. Hilda’s story was it.

To anyone who thinks tiaras and princes and vanished kingdoms are trivial, I understand. Maybe they are trivial in the grand scheme of things. But they gave me a reason to keep going, keep writing, keep thinking, keep dreaming, when I was hanging onto sanity with my fingernails. Maybe, just maybe, they saved my life. To me, that’s everything.

So What Happens Now?

Well, I’ll tell you. First, you look deep into my eyes.

You are getting sleepy. You are getting verrrry sleepy.

You want to read every blog post I write. You want to support the site on Patreon so I’ll be able to spend more time bringing you amazing stories about royal women and their tiaras. You want to tell your friends about this site so you can all talk about it together.

When I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up and feel refreshed...and wonder where you can sign up for my mailing list.

**snap**

SIGN UP NOW