My biggest heartbreak.

Ok, so as I promised, I am going to begin telling you some of the challenges I have faced while writing this book. I know I haven't posted anything in a few days and I apologize for that.

To get started, I just wanted to say that I used to hate technology and quite honestly, I didn't know how to use a computer. Though that was my biggest challenge, I'm actually a little bit proud to admit that. I had better things to do than play with a computer. I read books. I played outside. When I wrote something, I wrote it on paper with a pencil. Go ahead, call me old-fashioned. There's just something about the smell of paper and ink...

All of my research for writing this book came from books. I read encyclopedias for the kind of clothes they wore back in 15th century Europe, the sort of things they ate, what their music sounded like and the sort of instruments they had. I began reading literature that was written during that time to better understand how they talked and what life might have been like. I then read so many fairy tales. I enjoyed every minute of my research.

Beyond The Veil was originally titled The Story Of Holly Hocks. I had no reason for setting it in the specific date of 1406. I started writing it about 8 years ago and had completed it within 5 months time. Being the noob that I was/am, I typed the first chapter on the computer and forgot to save it. But it wasn't so bad. I had the first 10 chapters written in my journal. After they were typed out, I ripped the pages out and threw them away. And then I forgot to save those chapters on the computer. I obviously didn't know what I was doing. I was so upset, I cried for a while. The third time around, I completed the book and saved it. I was extremely happy with myself as you may imagine. I printed the manuscript and ended up with about 144 pages. I saved the story to a hard drive (or so I thought). Of course one day I lost the printed manuscript, and of course, after plugging in the hard drive, found there was nothing on it. Unfortunately the computer I had typed it on no longer worked. There was no way that I knew of on how to save my story. All that hard work, all those months I put into it and it was just gone. You may say I've had an easy life when I admit this, but that was honestly one of the biggest heartbreaks I've ever experienced.

I included here a couple more of my drawings of Hollyhocks. Please remember that I drew these years ago and I like to think my drawing skills have improved since then. Consider this post part 1 of my early challenges. I'll try to post part 2 tomorrow. ;)