Have you ever found a $20 bill in your pocket and said, "Wow! Thanks, past me!"
In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell shares the tale of an author who sat down to write book three in a four-book series to find she'd already written a third of it. Spoiler: that author was her.
Have you ever found a $20 bill in your pocket and said, "Wow! Thanks, past me!"
In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell shares the tale of an author who sat down to write book three in a four-book series to find she'd already written a third of it. Spoiler: that author was her.
Megan: [00:00:02] Maybe just, like, comb through your old computer files and see if you've written any books you've forgotten about, because there could be some real gems in there.
Announcement: [00:00:16] Welcome to A Book and A Dream with Megan O'Russell: An Author's Adventure in Writing, Reading, and Being an Epic Fangirl.
Megan: [00:00:28] Hello, my name is Megan O'Russell, and welcome to Episode 30 of A Book and A Dream. That's right. We have made it to the Big Three-O.
Megan: [00:00:37] Oh, for all my lovely creative folks out there, whether you are a songwriter, a writer, a playwright, whatever your medium is, I am here with a cautionary tale for you. So please accept my wisdom.
Megan: [00:00:55] I had a very strange author experience this week that I'm not sure many authors have had.
Megan: [00:01:02] So I spent about the last nine-ten months living only in Ilbrea, for writing at least. There were other books being released. But I was working on writing Ilbrea and polishing Inker and Crown, which I was so excited to release next month.
Megan: [00:01:17] And so I was living in this very... strange, not strange, but not the happiest of places.
Megan: [00:01:25] I mean, I love Ilbrea, but bad things happen as they do it all drama.
Megan: [00:01:30] But they happen in, like, really bad ways there. So when it came time to jump into Bryant Adams, I was super excited. Bryant Adams, The Tale of Bryant Adams, the first book of which is How I Magically Messed Up My Life in Four Freakin' Days. And that title really describes very well what the book is about. It's very tongue in cheek. It takes place in Manhattan. And he's a boy wizard who is not meant to save the world. There's a magic cell phone. It's just a fun romp through magic. Yeah.
Megan: [00:02:00] Some people die and there are very desperate situations, but there are very few moments where you really need to take Bryant very seriously. He's just there to make you laugh and give you an adventure. And yeah, he's going to tug on your heartstrings a little bit, but it's very much a feel good, laugh out loud, humorous, magical thing. Which was great to jump into after so long in Ilbrea, where there are so many, like, desperate situations to just be like, "and my cat likes to sleep with her butt on my face" in Bryant and, like, go the complete opposite direction.
Megan: [00:02:38] So I went back because it's been a while since I've worked on Bryant. What had happened was, I was with a publisher who had three different series under contract, which sounded great. In theory it was great.
Megan: [00:02:54] But then I got word that they only wanted to publish one book per author per year.
Megan: [00:03:04] But they had three series of mine under contract, and then instead of like doing a series and finishing it and then moving on to the next series, they wanted to rotate years.
Megan: [00:03:15] So readers would always be waiting three years for the next book in the series.
Megan: [00:03:21] This did mark the beginning of the end for that publisher, by the way. I think they didn't realize that readers were not going to go for that. And then it all, like, crumbled from there.
Megan: [00:03:30] I mean, there are probably other problems, too, but I don't know about those things. I'm just an author. I hang out and let them deal with their drama. Anyway. So in order to avoid having before in the tale of Bryant Adams come out in 2024, I decided I was going to do what was always impossible for me and write a trilogy instead of a four book series. I usually set out thinking things are going to be a trilogy. They end up a four book series. I don't... I don't know. It's just how it goes. And so I started working on this book three that was going to combine everything I wanted from book three and book four and just be like... longer than any of the other books. Then at least the readers would have the entire story without having to wait four more years. And then I left that publisher and I went indie and I sort of threw what I had worked on in the computer equivalent of a back drawer to the point that I... I've gotten a new computer in the meantime. It wasn't even on my new computer.
Megan: [00:04:37] Like, good thing I didn't get rid of my old computer, because that file would have been gone forever. I had never even emailed it to myself. I didn't back it up. That's how much I just didn't want to think about this.
Megan: [00:04:48] So to prepare for starting from scratch for book three and book four, I went back, I reread Bryant One. I reread Bryant Two, I reread through all of my notes. I made new notes. There's pages of notes. It's basically a Bryant Adams notebook, which is really fun, actually.
Megan: [00:05:03] And I went to go start on book three and I was like, okay, well, I remember like working on something for Book three, so I should probably like, see if I can find the file.
Megan: [00:05:16] And I couldn't find it on my computer. And I was like, oh, that's weird. So I went back to my old computer and I found it, and I opened it.
Megan: [00:05:23] And it's a third of a book. It is twenty-three thousand words long.
Megan: [00:05:29] That is a third of a Bryant Adam book... Adams book. For those of you who are not authors, this is the equivalent of not finding five dollars in your pocket, not finding twenty dollars in your old winter coat. This is like finding a thousand dollars that you just didn't know you had.
Megan: [00:05:45] And I guess I was so mad about the publishers collapsing, and like my publishing career blowing up in smoke, that I had just, like, locked out that I had ever written this.
Megan: [00:05:59] And, you know, it's amazing what the human mind can do. So I decided, like, OK, well, clearly I spent some time on this. I should go back and reread it. And this is where we get to the unique experience part.
Megan: [00:06:13] I don't remember writing it. I did not remember what happened.
Megan: [00:06:20] So I got to read my whole work not knowing what came next.
Megan: [00:06:29] And I don't think that many authors get to do that.
Megan: [00:06:33] And it was very cool to not know when the laugh line was coming. To not see The plot twist, that I had written, coming, which is really weird and, you know, makes me doubt my sanity, like a tiny little bit. But it was such a cool experience. And it was such a fun, Bryant-like way to jump back into the series.
Megan: [00:07:02] And so now I, you know, it's not what I need it to be because I'm no longer cramming two books into one tiny package. I am going to have Bryant three and Bryant four out by the fall.
Megan: [00:07:14] So it's going to be great. But there is a lot of good material in there that I get to use, and plot twists that I didn't know I had planned.
Megan: [00:07:27] So, all this to say, dear writers who have gotten really mad and thrown something in a back drawer, There is the chance that, like, maybe you threw it to the door for a reason, but maybe go check your old material, maybe just like comb through your old computer files and see if you've written any books you've forgotten about, because there could be some real gems in there. So, just take the, take like an afternoon, you know, have coffee, have wine, whatever your delight is, and comb through your old papers and see if maybe you forgot you wrote a book.
Megan: [00:08:10] If I'm not the only one who's forgotten they wrote a book, then comment on the video and tell me your experience because, or the podcast or find me on social media or, you know, send someone to come and haul me away and lock me up because I've lost my mind. Whatever. It's up to you. But let me know, because I would love to know if this is a unique experience or if it's normal. And if you haven't ever checked out the Bryant Adams series, How I Magically Messed Up My Life in Four Freakin' Days is the first book in the series. Currently it is in Kindle Unlimited. You can only get the ebook on Amazon. It will be going wide at the end of the summer. Finally, I'm making the leap. Woo hoo! All my books will be wide, and book three in the series...
Megan: [00:08:53] If you've already read How I Magically Messed Up My Life in Four Freakin' Days and Seven Things Not To Do When Everyone's Trying To Kill You, then the third book, Three Simple Steps to Wizarding Domination, will be out in September. And I am so excited to finish this project that I apparently started.
Megan: [00:09:11] Yep. See you next time.