The Wild Kingdom has been a labour of love and discovery. Four years, 157,035 words, fifty-three chapters, and several adventures later, this book has become more than I ever thought it could. This is the story of how The Wild Kingdom came to be, from inception to the final draft.
How it Started
I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that when I started writing, I was writing for the wrong reasons, but along the way, they became the right ones.
After several consecutive bad days at work, I was angry, frustrated, and didn’t know what to do with my life. But I knew that I didn’t want to work at a corporate office filled with politics for the next 30 years. I wanted to do something that felt good, honest to myself, something creative I could control.
Ripping it All Apart
Then I started to read my manuscript.
It was horrible. It was so bad that I couldn’t even force myself to finish it. I almost shelved it right then, but I held on to that golden kernel of advice I’d been given that I needed to push through this stage. Thicken my skin, rewrite it, gut it, really examine the story I wanted to tell. After a couple of good cries into my partner’s chest, I started to replot the book and started making large, sweeping, structural changes. I threw out the first 30% of the manuscript.
It took me a year of rewrites to get the book to take on the general shape it has now, except at this point, it was only Olin’s storyline and Somya’s story didn’t exist.
I read the manuscript again. It was good. Really good, actually. But somewhere along the way, I was no longer happy with writing a generic romantasy to mimic ACOTAR. I had ideas that stole over my mind at work, in the middle of the night, over dinner with my family. I’ve always loved rich worldbuilding, and I wanted my book to have that as a focus point. And as much as my story followed the Save The Cat! outline, it didn’t feel complete. It lacked substance. Grit.
And so I had an idea for a girl who was bitter and frustrated and irritable—incidently all of the parts I hated most about myself—and who became an apprentice to a bone broker. That was the first and only idea for Somya’s story line. I wrote those eleven chapters in a single week. I was posessed for those days, more in this realm than the real world. I was irritated any time someone talked to me, and typed like my fingers were burning. The story and characters came out fully formed, and to this day, those eleven chapters are the ones that have been touched the least in this book. Morwena felt so real as I was writing her that I was scared if I looked at her the wrong way, she’d reach out and claw my eyes out.
Drafting
I hauled my laptop to Starbucks that night and started writing, with no idea of what I wanted to write other than a bare-bones concept. I loved the romantasy style of ACOTAR, but I wanted my own spin on it with all my favourite tropes, AND I was convinced that fae were overdone, so wanted to do fairies instead. I named the book A Realm of Gossamer and Gold. Why? Absolutely no reason other than that it sounded romantasy-like. For those who like easter eggs, you’ll be delighted to know that I left the phrase ‘gossamer and gold’ on the first page of chapter fifty as an ode to what The Wild Kingdom was back in its earliest stages.
Every time I had a bad day at work, I would go to a coffee shop after work and write until it closed or I was invariably kicked out. And I grew invested, to the point where I started doing research on writing techniques and watching writing accounts on social media to get every tip I could. The single biggest piece of advice that I clung on to was: just keep writing. Even when it’s bad. Even when you want to give up—it’s the only thing that separates those who publish from those who don’t.
I finished the draft six months later.
Then I paid way too much money to print the entire manuscript at Staples and have it coil bound so I could hold it in my hands. I was so excited and so proud. Even the clerk helping me at Staples was in shock that I wrote a book and that she was printing it for me, and my rose coloured glasses shone bright that day. I even let the manuscript sit for thirty days like all the advice online said.
Olin’s storyline was a loveletter to myself for the parts of myself I most liked. Somya’s storlyline was a love letter to all the parts of myself I most hated.
Developmental Edits
I finally felt like the book was in a good enough place to have real people read it, and so I opened up to beta reader applications and promoted posts with the information on all my social media accounts.
My wonderful beta readers—Amber Eve, Ashlynn Armstrong, Courtney Weiss, Devon Blackstock—enjoyed it, but their feedback was similar. The romance with Elijah was too rushed, and Olin and Chaos’ romance felt under-developed.
So then stemmed several major edits to the romance arcs.
Engaging an Illustrator
The book was so close, and I knew that I wanted very high quality chapter headers, breakers, and a map. I spent a long time looking for an illustrator that would bring the style I wanted, the intricacies and the fine line work. Then I saw Samantha Curran promoting her book on TikTok, complete with illustrations she’d done herself. They were exactly the style I was looking for, so I reached out through DM, and everything unravelled from there. She has been so incredible to work with, and has always nailed the vision in my head, plus a little more of her own brilliance. Here are some snippets of early concept sketches.
Making of the Map
Making of the Chapter Headers
Engaging an Editor
It had always been important to me that I spend the money to hire an editor, and that I didn’t just edit myself and release it without professional eyes on it. It’s an important quality lens from a self publishing standpoint, but also because I fell in love with writing and decided this is what I wanted to do in life. Even if it took ten years and a dozen shelved books. I want to look back on this book with pride, not wishing I’d spent a bit more time and money to make it the best it could possibly be.
I found my editor, Clara Abigail, through Fiverr, and started the process of querying, doing sample edits, and sending over my manuscript. Working with Clara was great. I loved reading the commentary and reactions to each scene, and catching the plot holes she pointed out. I had also been convinced that I was a master with commas, only to discover that this was not at all the case. That was a bit of a mind-fuck.
I made all the edits, but went a little too far on the line by line edits, and made it feel choppy. I spent the next couple edit rounds smoothing out flow and adding more musicality to the text. It was a very surreal experience to see the polish of my book continue to elevate until I felt like I could pluck it from a bookstore shelf.
Designing the Cover
When it came time to design the cover, I had no idea what I wanted other than having dark green as the core colour, an old twisted tree, and I didn’t want it to blend into the shelves along the thousands of other romantasy books. Here are some of the earliest concept proofs:
I am so grateful for this story and how it developed alongside me these past four years. I’ve always believed that stories don’t ever truly belong to the author alone, they belong in pieces to every reader that has loved it and found a piece of themselves in the text. It is my sincere hope that love you this book just as much as I do.