2nd Book Release
Putting out one book was a challenge,
but putting out a second one has been more terrifying to me than childbirth.
With Say Nothing being released, I’m sitting here filled with anxiety. To the brim! So much so, my blood pressure has been elevated, my hands have been shaking, and my heart has been racing. I’m both excited to share this story and terrified no one will like it, even though anyone who’s read it has expressed it’s better than the last one. I feel like human trafficking is something we talk about to wag our fingers in disapproval, but aren’t brave enough to see the real horror. The real horror being, that for the 1% that return home, they have to live with it. They will suffer and be afraid every second of every day for the rest of their lives. They’ll feel alienated from their family, friends, and any other person on earth. No amount of therapy or money can ever help them live comfortably in the world. Writing Bexley’s character was a fine line of making her real and making her relatable. In many other versions of this book, she was far less put together and much more paranoid and emotionally distraught. The problem was, it made her infuriating to read about. Not for me, but for the common reader. That said, I can’t imagine how a real victim would feel so forced to conform just to hold another person’s attention…
Say Nothing wasn’t always called Say Nothing. It was called Before Maslen Falls. The name didn’t change until March this year when I designed the cover. As soon as I saw that picture of a girl with a blindfold on, extending back behind her—like it followed her from the past into the present—I was caught on needing a title change. I asked myself one question: How did she make it to where she was in life? The answer was simple, she said nothing. Bex doesn’t complain, she walks forward. She doesn’t pine for attention because she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want to talk, and more than that, she can’t. Everything she does is a risk, and the only way to keep a secret is to never tell it.
I have worked on this book for the last six or seven years and learned so much. I learned about life, myself, who I want to be, the kind of people I want to be around, what love looks like, what it doesn’t, and found that hard-line opinions began to soften as I looked at the world through the lens of Bexley, Ryan, Grey, and Ben. More often than not, I’ve wished to have a kind and profoundly thoughtful nature like Bexley, have the humble confidence of Grey Maslen, the take-no-beef attitude of Ryan Brae, and the eagerness to guide broken views back into alignment like Ben Lawrence. While each of them contain pieces of me, I struggle with feeling so far from their enigmatic qualities. Their collective stories feel so close and real that I struggle to ever put this book down or stop telling their stories.
The thing I fear most about this book going out into the world is that people will misunderstand Bexley’s story. Hers is unique only to her. It’s not a utopian concept to fall in love with someone who is both kind and has money. Her life was shattered and kept being shattered over and over, and even after she met the guy, she had to fight like hell, lose and lose some more just to stay with him. I couldn’t write how much she really struggles with her own mortality, even when things were going well, because it would make her sound weak—which to me was a huge disservice to her character. She’s the strongest character I’ve ever written. I’ve worked so hard on this story, telling it exactly right, showing the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I hope my readers fall as madly in love with it as I’ve always been.
Until next time.
Happy Reading Friends! ~Elly
