Cheat Code to My Books

See, I’m a writer. Clearly. I mean, I hope you know that by now, since you’ve somehow made it to this post right here, in the middle of my author website. But as a writer, especially a young one who writes a lot quickly, I have multiple books that I like to talk about. And I figured that if I got confused (and I wrote them!) that other people might be a tiny bit confused too. Also I just wanted to talk about my books and what they mean to me. 

Book One. Now, understand that this is one of the only times you will ever hear this book mentioned. Ever. Because I was twelve when I wrote it, and I prefer to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and that I didn’t print out copies and give them to people, because now that will be what they think of when they think of me… 😑 Anyway. I actually love this book, because it’s my first book! And it’s 63,000 words long! So yeah, while the characters have the depth of a flattened cardboard box and the writing is clumsier than a hippopotamus, I still love The Silver Mirror. 

I wrote The Silver Mirror when I started taking writing seriously. A little over three years ago now. It’s the story of a girl who walks through a mirror into a suffering land and discovers that she has to save it. And later on, that she gets to save it. So… yeah. I’ll always treasure this book, and nothing will ever take its place. I might even come back and reuse the plot someday. But for now, it can stay comfortably on its shelf. 

Book Two. The Traitor’s Daughter. This might be familiar to a few of you. This is the story of Mia Martin and Ethyn Forten, and I am not ashamed to say it’s a step up from The Silver Mirror. I’m proud of this book, because I shared this one with people. I posted it. And the next book, and the one that came after. And honestly, I think it’s not half bad for a book written by a thirteen-close-to-fourteen year-old. It had enough substance for me to write a whole trilogy about it and it taught me about characters. How to give them depth, how to give them personalities beyond sad and noble. I mean, it created Fletcher. And it gave me books numbers three and book four.

Book Three. The Tyrant’s Son. Yes, I wrote the whole trilogy one after the other. The Tyrant’s son was trickier to write, because it was when I started romance. Complete transparency, I had no experience with romance when I wrote it. I got to have fun with it though! I had to find a way to keep the middle from sagging in something I knew would be a trilogy. I wrote a lot of injuries. I pulled some pretty sweet plot twists, if I do say so myself. This book continues on from where I left Mia and Ethyn in the last book, with the city teetering on the edge of war and tasks still left undone. 

Book Four. The finale of The Traitor’s Daughter trilogy: The Queen’s Children. To be honest, this one was so easy to write. It flowed freely with what I knew about the characters, I got to dig up backstory, and overall, conclude this series that had filled two years of my life. It was really bittersweet. This book taught me about tension, that every scene mattered. About how I really have a hard time writing girls 😂. In this book, Mia and Ethyn fight for what they love. They lose things. They have to deal with the darkest parts of themselves and figure out what family really means. And ultimately, they have to learn to let go. 

Book Five. Tiger Lily. Quite possibly my favorite book I’ve ever written, because it so uncannily reflected hurt parts of myself I didn’t even know existed. It had pieces of me sticking out of it the whole way through. If Tiger Lily was one word, it would be raw. Tiger Lily bled ink, and yet it healed me. It was adventure and danger and evil scientists and tigers and everything I’d wanted to write ever since I started. In a way, it’s a salute to the first two stories I ever wrote. One about a girl who rescued tigers and one about a tiger himself. 

Tiger Lily went through stages. From awful to cringy, to slightly less bad, to ok, this could be really good. From wow, I wrote that to this book is me. I like to think this book is a little shard of myself, if I could turn into a tiger and was really hurt. But really, I hope it’s a reflection of other people, because if there’s one thing I want Tiger Lily to be, it’s a light to the dark places. 

This book taught me about pain. It showed me that healing could happen, that there was joy in everything, and above all, it gave me the guts to cement myself as a Christian writer. I’d danced that line for a while, being a Christain writer and being a writer who has God in her writing. Tiger Lily let me cross that line. (To be clear, good, true, and beautiful Christian books don’t need God explicitly in the writing to be glorifying him) And finally… as of January 2025…

Book Six. Tiger Lily 2. Name Pending. At the moment, this book is a hot mess, not gonna lie. But at its core, it is about healing. If Tiger Lily was about all the raw, vulnerable places in us, the second book is how we manage to shine the light in and put those pieces back together. This book is not something that I could’ve written if I hadn’t figured out that I was gonna write about God through the lens of fiction. It’s about forgiveness. Trust. Family that is both found and that you are born into. This book in a word was hope. 

And those are my books. I guess the title of this post really should’ve been Cheat Code to My Books (And What They Taught Me), but I’m not gonna change it 😆. Each book was a step on my writing path, and I’m sure there are a lot more waiting. I know there’s a whole library hiding out inside my head. Anyway, thank you for reading. Now you know what books I’m talking about and whether or not you should pay attention when I mention them 😁.