A Brief History of Murder

Or how 16-year-old me wrote, rewrote, and (sort of) failed to publish her very first novel...

Late 2000s, nowhere Carolina. The winter-dry farmland and clay-red soil stretch for miles. In my seat on the morning school bus, I pull out a worn paperback copy of Jane Eyre, struggling to read it through the slanted morning light and the bounce of thick tires over pock-marked asphalt.

In those days, my world is high school and the desolation of a nothing suburb in the southern United States. Between band practice and trigonometry, I couldn't be further from the wild moors and doomed romances of Victorian England if I tried.

Yet every day, staring out the window of the bus, scribbling in the margins of my lecture notes, between classes and after, that's exactly where I'm going: back in time, across the ocean. Slowly but steadily, a story begins to take shape in my head. It's got a haunted house and a troubled family and there's forbidden magic in the heart of it.

I finish the first draft of A Murder of Crows shortly after graduating high school. Mary Shelly was 20 years old when she published Frankenstein, and at 18 I think maybe, just maybe, I might have her beat — especially when an agent offers rep for it during my first round of queries. But the publishing world is fickle, and a couple rounds of submission later, the agent drops me.

Instead I start working on other books, but the story and the world behind Murder refuse to leave me alone. At some point between backpacking through Slovakia and teaching English in Malta, I rewrite the entire thing, shifting it from 3rd person to 1st, focusing in on the voice of the book's 14-year-old protagonist. I also chart out the rest of the series, outlining the second book in excruciating detail.

And then, in 2018, I move to the UK. Through my master's program in London, I'm fully submerged in the publishing industry for the very first time. I learn about the curse of the 14-year-old protagonist, and about the difficulty of publishing stories outside accepted genre and structural norms. More than that, I learn the challenge facing anyone who decides to self-publish, never mind those who self-publish for teen readers

But in the end, I know that this is the book I would've wanted to read as a teenager, the book that I wrote as a teenager, hoping to escape my dull, sweltering suburban life. And so here I am, giving the book another chance to find its audience, hoping that maybe, just maybe, it might be able to give someone else the escape that it first gave me.

A Murder of Crows is the first book in The Ravenscourt Tragedies. Starting this Halloween, you'll be able to read a preliminary draft of the novel FOR FREE here on Substack, with hefty chapters dropping every other week. Meanwhile, I'll be sharing background notes and bits of research and worldbuilding, with exclusive bonus material for paid subscribers. Drop your email below to make sure you never miss a post.

Thank you for reading. I can't wait to share this world with you.