And so it begins...
I came across Substack almost by accident. I knew it existed, I know writer friends who’ve joined, and I vaguely knew from somewhere that it was a good way of ‘getting a newsletter out there.’ But of course, when I eventually joined I began to realise it was much more than that, and so here I am.
I’m in between projects at the moment, querying agents with my YA Fantasy, SHE WHO DEFIED THE ORDER (hence the title of this Substack), and starting work on a new YA project, contemporary this time.
I’m here to make sure I carry on writing, but also to explore stuff I may not be able to in my novels. Over the past year I discovered my heart truly is in writing for young adults because what drives me is the chance, through my stories, to encourage young people to dare to discover their true selves (not the ones the outside world tells them they ‘should’ be), to dare to be themselves, and to dare to dream. When I was growing up, I didn’t feel there was much scope to dream beyond the strict expectations the adults around me imposed.
In my fantasy, She Who Defies the Order, magic is outlawed by the colonising Grand Order and one of the central questions is: why do we choose to override our own intuition (or magic) in favour of logic, reason, and other people’s beliefs and opinions? Now that’s certainly something I wished I’d asked myself at a much younger age!
I came to realise how much the title of my novel actually fitted me so perfectly as the angry young girl who so wanted to defy every order imaginable (and in some instances did). In my twenties through to my early fifties I rebelled a lot, but more as a reaction to the restrictions I’d had imposed on me while growing up. These days rather than wanting to defy everything, I’m thankfully more able to catch myself before I react, but that’s still a work in progress. And that’s probably what this Substack will be about – navigating the ups and downs of writing, and of the life that feeds into it.