Strangely Beautiful: a rare, raw window.

Today's post is about my beloved, award-winning, bestselling Strangely Beautiful saga. As many of you know, my first three novels are out-of-print, due to the collapse of Dorchester Publishing. One can find used copies of Dorchester print books online, but none of the proceeds of second-hand books go to authors. If you're looking to dive into that series, please see if your local library has the series rather than paying overpriced prices for an out-of-print copy, OR wait until the NEW editions, freshly revised, with new scenes(!) and new content, entirely repackaged, release April 2016 from Tor/Forge, my new publisher, available for pre-order now. The series being out of print, in addition to a huge financial loss that I took in unpaid royalties and such, has been devastating for me, something I haven't really talked about publicly. It was like having children taken away along with paychecks. But now that Tor has picked up the series and it will officially back out legitimately in the world again, including the fourth and final book at last, I can relax a bit and hopefully what was a career and financial setback and general turn of bad luck will turn itself back around. I hope.

I posted the following a while ago within a contained circle. Here, nervously, now brazenly public, I let you all in on a little window into my mind, written at a time when Miss Percy's resurrection wasn't certain. She has always lived so vibrantly in my mind since she first waltzed into it nearly thirteen years ago, never had she simply 'quit'. Through all the turmoil, she'd remained gentle, stoic, resolute. Until she simply couldn't any more. And she faltered. Faded. I panicked. Now that I know she is safe once more, I can share this with you, so that you can see and know just how important she is as a character, and the series as a whole is, to me, and, I hope she can be so to you when it comes time for her to shine again in the future.
_
February 2013
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To my most beloved girl, as you lie upon the hospital bed of my mind, fading of a broken heart as your tale lies in purgatory...
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My Dearest Percy,
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Thirteen years ago you burst into my mind and changed everything. You were eighteen. I was twenty-one. With your ghostly visage, your entirely colourless flesh, your pearl-white hair, timid smile, wide ice-blue eyes, trembling hands and a heart so big I could feel it beat across one hundred and twelve years of time, you struck me to the core. You utterly possessed me, obsessed me, and I had to know absolutely anything and everything about you. Your days consumed mine. I came to know the sweetest soul I've ever had the honour to imagine, the purest heart, the most radiant spirit, an Angel come to a ghostly Victorian earth of my dreamy imagining. You, fragile, dear and unique thing, you so unlike anything I'd ever known in this life and yet so utterly familiar to me, you were immediately my best friend, my child, my great love, my pride and joy. You became my favourite thing. 
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I knew that my life would never be the same for needing, desperately, to tell your tale. Through you I understood my purpose in life like I'd never understood it before: I was a storyteller for your sake. I was here on this earth to tell many tales, but yours most of all. Through you I understood my strange childhood obsession with the years of the 1880s, all my intense, maddeningly certain feelings that I didn't belong in this century, the shadows of my mind, being misunderstood suddenly made sense. All this was so that I could belong with you, translate you, serve you. It was so I could be your voice.
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It took a long time until you met the world. Sometimes you and I were all we had in the winters of our discontent, in the long dark nights of our soul, two lonely wanderers. We traveled together to many different cities, you saw me through love and loss and heartbreak and drama. You kept me alive in my darkest hours. You were a reason to live. Nearly nine years, countless revisions of your tale, endless hours of work-shopping, networking and all the harsh business that makes art so frustrating. And then, through sheer force of will, very hard work, a lucky break, all the things that it takes, you landed your contract that would put you out into the world. That was in the fall of 2009.
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You broke onto the scene in a blaze of your special brand of light and garnered notice. Some of the world fell in love with you, some did not. You made your mark, did well, and I was so blindingly proud of you. You were always yourself; sweet, dear, timid, radiant, with a heart so huge the world could so easily break it, and sometimes it tried with harsh words. But nothing broke you. You were stronger than anyone ever imagined. There are many types of strength. Loving with your whole being, loving as a force of nature, that takes more strength than most can comprehend. As you wove your way into the world, so did you weave impossibly deeper into my mind and heart, you continued to be my bedtime story as you had been for over a decade. You and The Guard ushered me into sleep for as many nights as I'd known you, guardians of my psyche and subconscious.
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And then every author's worst nightmare happened. Your publisher folded, taking your stories, the rights surrounding them, and a great deal of money owed, down into the underworld, tangled up in difficulties. Much like your mythological namesake. And there you've wandered in purgatory, out of print, difficult to find, with no restitution for you or for me, for nearly three years now. The legacy of your family remains unfinished as other jobs and tales had to be undertaken so I could survive... The situation in which we found ourselves was complicated and there was no easy answer. I've sought to place you where my other novels will be placed, I think you'll be safest there, I await word. But you haven't just been lost revenue during all this. You've been my lost soul. My lost heart. For anyone who think this sounds overdramatic, then frankly that person doesn't know anything about me. I did not go out and publicly make rants about the situation, close friends knew the trauma but I maintained a public face of good humour and hard work. I penned other characters and dramas, trying not to act like my heart was breaking, trying not to seem like one of the most vital parts of my soul was dying in an effort to live and be seen. Those who don't think you're real never got to know you.
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And you, dear girl, so vibrant in my mind, so alive and with me; my alter ego and best self, you were so brave and strong through all this mess; quietly stepping aside, patient, allowing me to work on other tales. I love all the children I create, but sometimes a mother does have a favourite child.  I hope you saw how many tears I shed for you. I have cried for your triumphs and your bitter disappointments more than the world could ever know. Still, you remained strong. Until you just couldn't any longer.
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You broke down in my mind, swift and sudden, in a fit that shocked me. Weary of being ignored, you were agonized that your tales were held captive and you lashed out. Righteously angry. You burst into tears and tore around Athens Academy in a sobbing rage until you collapsed, clinging onto me as you fell. I sunk with you onto the marble floor and beloved Alexi and I, the both of us weeping, carried you to the infirmary. 
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You are so tired, you are so heartbroken that you've just fallen into a deep, deep sleep, a porcelain, ghostly sleeping beauty, and I'm the heartbroken mother sitting at your side, stroking your pearlescent locks as I don't know when I can rouse you again and bring you back unto the world. The promise of your re-publication remains uncertain, and that is partly my fault. I know I could have already put your tales back out for publication myself in this digital age, but I've lacked the funds, time, resources and knowledge to do it properly in order to give you everything you deserve. You warrant a resurrection via the traditional manner with an entire team behind you, before publishing changes to an unrecognizable point. We are old fashioned, you and I. And so it is for this that I hold out hope and prayer as I sit at your bedside in my mind and hold your hand. Now it's my hand that's trembling. Now I'm the one feeling timid and overwhelmed. Where is my radiant heart to light the way without you, dear girl?
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I miss you so much. I love you more than I have loved any creation. You are still my favourite thing. You always will be. And when I can finally wake you with the promise of your resurrected life, oh how you will rise. Like the phoenix I gave you to love, you will rise just like him, my strangely beautiful girl, and you will shine so, so bright.
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But in the meantime, hang on, for me, my love, my pride and my joy, my sweetest creature, my greatest treasure, my luminous gift. I don't know if the world needs you, but you need to be in the world, and I need you most of all. Please hang on, for me. There's so much more of this life we need to see together and I don't want to see it without you.

Your grieving author,
Leanna
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Whew. Well, there you have it.

Now that dear Percy's future is, in fact, assured and she'll be reissued in shiny new editions with all the appropriate pomp and circumstance I feel she deserves thanks to the fine folks at Tor /Forge, I felt I could open up the most raw truth I've possibly ever shared, now that the worst is behind us. Fellow writers, if I can survive an author's worst nightmare, you can face all your demons. I promise you.


You can support STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL and it's bright new future here at Barnes & Noble and also at Amazon. Please do. 

Cheers and as always, happy haunting...