What I Didn’t Know

1) I didn’t know the word “Legendborn.” 

No, really. That word showed up late in the process. Let’s start with what I did know: I knew Legendborn’s original title was Descendants. I knew that title was a placeholder (because I didn’t want to offend the Mouse/Disney) for at least three rounds of revision. Eventually, my placeholder title’s life was up and I needed to make a decision. I returned to a list of phrases and ideas that I’d written at some point that covered the major themes of the book, and as I was skimming through that list, there, tucked about three-fourths of the way down, was a word I’d simply made up: legendborn. I stared at that word for a long moment. By this time, I really knew my book, and so I realized that “legendborn” was a term that could operate a few ways in the text. It was a way of describing someone (Bree, in particular) but it was also a collective noun. It captured the Arthurian elements of the novel without being overt, gestured to the Legendborn magic system, and felt like a strong statement about lineage and power. It was perfect.

But here’s where being a “discovery writer” helped me find an opportunity: Almost immediately after deciding on “Legendborn,” I realized the “-born” suffix and form of this word could help me define other groups in the book with in-world terms the modern Order of the Round Table might use—the demons could be “Shadowborn” and the non-magical humans could be “Onceborn.” I took these ideas to my incredible Welsh language and cultural consultant and asked if he could create new Welsh words to match my new original English ones. As a bard, he is always happy to play with words, so he deftly obliged with a few options that the modern Order might have landed on via the book’s fictional Welsh language evolution from Old Welsh to Modern Welsh. For “Legendborn” I eventually decided on my Welsh consultant’s  creation “Chwedlanedig.” “Shadowborn” became “Cysgodanedig” and “Onceborn” became “Unanedig.” The entire structure for how the Order views its warriors, its enemies, and humanity truly took shape once these terms were set.

2) I didn’t know that Bree was going to be a Medium.

I knew Bree was a Rootcrafter from the beginning, but I didn’t begin the writing process having decided on her specific branch of root. Was she a wildcrafter like her mother? Was she an aura reader? Could she see visions? Could she heal herself? Did she have super strength? I was well into the developmental process for Legendborn when I realized that Bree, like the story itself, had such a close thematic tie to death and grieving that she needed something magical to bind her to these themes in readers’ minds. 

I think I stumbled upon “Medium” as I was writing the scene between Bree and Patricia in the graveyard that takes place about halfway through Legendborn. Once Mariah showed up, I felt a pull toward creating a Black girl character who understood her own rootcraft branch intimately, even if her experience of that ability was very different from Bree’s. And so, giving Bree a concrete tie to the themes of the book, as well as another Black girl character to whom she could feel connected, resulted in her branch presenting itself to me without much digging. I knew she had to be a Medium. Once that decision was made, I began to play with possession and what that might look like for her…and eventually decided that Arthur would possess her in the climactic scene of the book. This is a nice tie to the canon of Arthuriana, in which there are recurring themes of Arthur dying, but then returning either in truth or in metaphor. Arthur possessing Bree also immediately escalates her experience of being Legendborn to a level that no one had seen before, because no other Legendborn had ever also been a Rootcrafted Medium. Bree being in conversation and communion with the dead would allow her to more clearly witness and wield what she learns in the memory walk at the climactic scene of Legendborn, and it allowed me as an author to utilize those experiences as the driver of her arc in the next book. Of course, possession and bodily autonomy become a major plot theme and conflict in Bloodmarked, too, but I had no way of knowing that before making this discovery about Bree’s branch of Rootcraft in Legendborn.

3) I didn’t know that Nick and Sel were going to be bonded—or that Sel was a “Kingsmage.”

Whew, this was a big, multi-layered discovery. At one point about halfway through the revision process I received a note that the love triangle could be better if I made it more clear on the page that the two boys have their own conflict dynamic that exists outside of Bree. Nicholas and Selwyn were already antagonistic toward one another in the text, the personalities we know and love were already clear, and the protective, duty-driven nature of Sel was already present. I knew that Nick and Sel had grown up together, but I could see how there needed to be something else, something specific and concrete that would make their constant collisions feel both unavoidable and inevitable. Something was missing from Sel’s role in the chapter and I spent a few weeks churning on this missing element and asking myself some questions: What else could Sel be and do? How official was his role? Were there any rituals or special power designations associated with it?

After thinking deeply about the idea of commitment and promises and magic that binds, I landed on the solution of creating a magical oath with a bond attached to it. Who would want to be bonded to someone else as a child, never to fully separate? Who would want to feel fear or anger from someone else as if it was their own? And what kind of messed up secret society would DO such a thing to two children? I realized that an oath could serve as an unbreakable, unyielding conflict between Nick and Sel that predates Bree. And even better, an oath could serve as a prism through which we see the boys’ dynamic transform once Bree arrives. Bree not only challenges their bond, but she changes it. All of the elements to support this magical connection were there, but it needed an official name and mechanism. Thus, with more contemplation on my part, a vague, lowercase “oath” became the specific, proper noun “Kingsmage Oath”—and Sel himself became a “Kingsmage.” Two phrases that didn’t exist before the third or fourth draft.

4) I didn’t know Oaths would become so important—or that Oathbound was on its way.

Because of my third discovery, suddenly the commitment that the Order makes Bree take in Legendborn felt different. It, too, needed to have a specific purpose: fealty. I realized that other magical promises would need to be made to tie these people to one another and to the organization over centuries, like the oaths that arise in other medieval stories and legends. Because these promises were magical, they could come with built-in stakes. We know that breaking an Oath can incur serious and even violent consequences on the Oath breaker, and that taking one on is a very loaded sacrifice. I knew then that these commitments all needed names to become official and now the Oaths are one of the most powerful magical mechanisms in this series—see Oathbound. 😏 

Looking back, I love that I worked my way toward the large, encompassing idea of the Cycle’s magical Oaths as a result of thinking earnestly and deeply about something as “tropey” as a love triangle. You’ll never hear me bad-mouthing the concept of tropes, by the way, and this is a great example of why! A familiar trope in the hands of an imaginative writer is a very beautiful, very generative, very productive thing. Tropes aren’t the enemy of a good novel; they’re shared springboards and handy tools to use as we build and devise something original and new.

5) I had no idea I would need four books to tell Bree’s story.

The original plan was for The Legendborn Cycle to be a trilogy. I pitched it as a trilogy, wrote Legendborn as a trilogy-starter, and wrote most of Bloodmarked thinking that it was a middle book in a series of three. It wasn’t until Bloodmarked made it very clear that there was more story to tell that I realized all of that careful planning required more runway. With the addition of a fourth book, I have been able to push the characters down a path with more stakes, introduce new characters, and allow Bree’s decisions—both good and bad—to play out with the full expression of their consequences. A three-book story would have never allowed me the time and space to do the things I have done in Oathbound, and without allowing myself to think fully about what oaths mean—and bargains and promises—I wouldn’t have dreamed up Oathbound in the first place.

Now that you’ve all seen the gorgeous Oathbound cover and read the description, it probably won’t surprise you when I say that Oathbound is a different animal. The tone of this book is darker, the twists have gotten twistier, and the stakes have burrowed deep. Bree’s “heroine’s journey” needed space to breathe and, as the author, I needed every character to have the space to face themselves, the decisions they’ve made, and who they want to become. Now that it’s moving toward completion, Oathbound feels like exactly what this series needs in order to launch us into a grand finale.