My book is officially one year old! Crazy! It doesn't feel like a year since I started this awesome journey, and that's because it isn't. I started writing in my teens. I had all of my work stolen from me at 16 and destroyed, because it was "too dark". Of course, it was. I was writing to escape a traumatic event I couldn't trust anyone in my life with. I had been writing random stories at that point, but the day I lost everything, I created Eclipse Monohue. She was nameless and faceless. Exactly the way I felt. Her story developed in my head, and I couldn't even put it on paper the way I wanted, for fear of losing it all again. I crippled my own writing, miserable every second of it, then quit.
Today, I'm celebrating one year of a published story that hopeless 16-year-old gave up on. I wish I could tell her it was all going to come to life ten years after she started it. I wish I could show her the passages I left exactly how she wrote them, just so her voice would finally be heard. I wish someone had told me how it got better, even when it gets worse. Writing saved my life, I've never doubted it. My sincerest hope for my books is that they help even just one person know the things 16-year-old Caroline deserved to know. I'd be amazed with just one, but everyone deserves to know they are powerful, they command their own lives, they are beautiful and magical in every way. Everyone deserves to be loved, especially by themselves.