[I’d like to welcome Angela Korra’ti at this stop on Drollerie Press’s blog tour. It’s good to have you, Angela, and I hope you all enjoy her revealing essay.]

Greetings to the readers of this blog, and many thanks to John for hosting my post. Hi! I’m Angela Korra’ti, Anna the Piper online and Anna to my friends. And I’m here to tell you about how I got into being a writer.

One of my earliest memories is from when I was about eight or so, and writing a story about a girl who gets spirited off by leprechauns and gets to be their queen for a day.

I’m wistful that that story actually hasn’t survived into my adulthood. Neither have most of the things I wrote when I was in middle school–fanfics from before I knew what fanfic was, thinly disguised fics for Battlestar Galactica (the original), Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even the cartoons Battle of the Planets and Thundercats. But two novels I wrote in school do still survive. And with them, my determination to be a writer.

When I was eighteen, I sent out my first actual query letter. I had no idea what I was doing, and the meticulous chapter by chapter outline I sent in with my first three chapters gave this away in spades, along with the simple fact that my writing was that of a high school girl who hadn’t yet learned the nuances of her craft. I was rejected, of course. And for a long time after that, aside from a few short pieces I wrote in college, I didn’t try very hard at writing anything else.

For thirteen years, I got distracted by online roleplaying games–text-based ones, where your prowess was demonstrated by how complex a character you could create, how well you could describe his or her actions, and how well you could run plots in which other players could participate. I mention this because despite the fact that I wasn’t actually writing during much of this time, I was learning characterization. I was learning a writing style, and I was learning how to plot. And people started saying to me, “Gosh, your poses read just like a novel!”

I started to wonder. Round about 1998, I started the groundwork for another novel, one which drew on the novels I’d written in school for backstory, but which I wanted to be a much more serious and hopefully maturer work.

Then my friend C.E. Murphy, with whom I’d spent many hours roleplaying as well as in game administration on Two Moons MUSH, quit MUSHing entirely to pursue her writing character. I asked myself why I wasn’t doing the same thing. And when Kit vociferously encouraged me to do Nanowrimo in 2003, I leapt at the chance to tackle a second novel, one into which I could throw everything I loved: Seattle, computer geekery, biking, cats, music, magic, Elvis Presley and Great Big Sea and Russell Crowe fandom, and elves. A week or two before November 2003 I banged out an outline, and when November 1st arrived, I started tearing through the first draft of the story.

By November 30th I had my 50,000 words. The story wasn’t done, so I kept going, and finished it in the middle of January of 2004. I’d achieved the first full novel I’d written in my adult life, go me! But next came the really tough part: polishing it and querying it.

That novel was FAERIE BLOOD, and in the summer of 2008, in its fourth draft, it finally won me an offer from Deena Fisher. I’m beyond grateful for the chance Drollerie’s given me to tell this story to the world at large.

Come grab a chair and raise a jar at http://annathepiper.livejournal.com, and look for FAERIE BLOOD to be released in early 2009! Because I may no longer be eight years old, and my leprechauns may have grown up with me to become snarky lightning-wielding Unseelie Elvis impersonators… but part of me is still very much that kid who wants to tell stories.

I hope you’ll enjoy mine.

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