(All My Friends Are Co-writing Without Me.)

We have a punk-rock relationship to composition. We write daily, fail fast, and are willing to accept a better idea. Maybe this method of collaboration is inevitable when a rockstar (Buechner), craftsman (Mueller), and teacher (Ward) decide to write a book together?

Good, bad, or other, having three people in the room to tell stories means we never have to find someone to give us notes. There are plenty of opinions in the writing room and we are quick to share them. Our friendship helps drive us, and honestly it’s nice to have each other to lean on. 

A few weeks ago our first book in a three book series, The Unraveling The Counsel of Crows was published by Th3rd World Studios with distribution from Simon and Schuster. We are even luckier because Recorded Books picked up our project and will release the audiobook on July 15, 2025. Talk about dreams coming true, right?

Beneath the seeming miracle of getting a great publisher, distribution, a PR firm, and an audio book lies one of the simplest and most difficult realities of writing: we had to be extremely patient. None of this was served to us overnight. To be clear there is a difference between being patient and waiting.

We worked for seven years with no promise of publication. We wrote and drafted, edited and redrafted. We found an artist to illustrate our book and he created an outstanding book cover (even before we had a publisher). We started our social media presence, paid someone to design a website and called everyone we knew to offer insight into our project. We secured domains, email handles, found beta readers, and pull quotes for our book. In short, we were patient, but we didn’t wait for someone to do this for us. 

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Writer’s are told to believe in their work. Believe against all odds that your work is worth it. We like that idea, but we might suggest clarifying the word belief. Belief in the absence of action isn’t worth all that much.

If we’d simply believed in our characters and the settings they inhabit while waiting for someone else to bring them to readers we bet we’d still be waiting around. We thought once our book arrived on shelves and was available at all the online chains we could sit back and enjoy the view.

Nope.

That’s not a thing.

The day the book dropped was when the really hard work started. In addition to writing the series we were also booking podcasts, bookstore and school talks, signings, conventions… Oh Lord, it keeps us busy.

Believe mightily in your work, and take the action necessary to allow others to believe too. And keep believing and acting for months after your book comes out. It sounds difficult, we know, but take heart writer friend, we offer this advice because we found that we could do it. Swear on our moms, if we can you certainly can.

Check out Buechner, Mueller, and Ward’s The Unraveling The Counsel of Crows here:

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 Check out Helen Sedgwick’s The Comet Seekers today.

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1) Have patience.

If you rush to submit a story too early, it won’t be satisfying for the reader. Trying to force writing to happen faster than it naturally does is as futile as trying to force a tomato to ripen by giving it a deadline. There is something beautiful about slowing down and taking the time. Gardening taught me that the right words come at their own pace.

2) Give it space.

Plants don’t like to be smothered, and neither does writing. Both require space around them. Plants need sunlight, and writing doesn’t work if it’s too cluttered; overwriting a story can destroy it. Learning to give my writing—and my mind—more space helped me write my novel. So step back from time to time, clear away the adjective weeds, and let the light in.

3) Move it if you need to.

Sometimes, a plant just doesn’t thrive. It doesn’t produce fruit, or it’s leaves look sickly, or it won’t grow. When that happens, you need to dig it up and move it somewhere new, where there will be a different character of light or soil. But sometimes more drastic action is required. When a plant fails, it is time to get rid of it and start over.

4) Know when it’s ready.

Just as picking fruit too early is pointless, leaving it to over-ripen can be disastrous. I once harvested pak choi a fortnight late, and instead of tender crispy stalks I had tough, flavourless fibres. With writing, it’s important to know when to stop tinkering, when a story is finished. Everyone you speak to will have different opinions and suggestions for your work, but at some point you have to say: enough.

5) Don’t expect it to be sweet.

Then it happened, I got a book deal. It was what I’d been dreaming of for a decade. It was wonderful. But it was also nerve-wracking and exposing, and not at all what I thought it would be. I remember the first time I ate rhubarb as a child: it smelled so rich, and it looked luxurious—such vibrant reds swirling though golden custard. I expected sweetness, but I tasted the sharp tang of perfectly tart rhubarb. Because, with gardening and with writing, not everything is as sweet as you anticipate. Happiness can be found from writing though—and from the astounding variety of rhubarb-based desserts—so enjoy the unexpected flavours and experiences.

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Some regard it a virtue, and if there’s any one thing I’ve learned since embarking upon my journey into the publishing world, it’s that you need it in spades.

Many are of the impression the most difficult part of being a writer is the actual writing. And yes, crafting a good novel can take years, and the process may be fraught with numerous ups and downs and interrupted by the vicissitudes of life. But for me, writing the book was the easy part; it’s what came after that tested my mettle.

Order a copy of Becoming Darkness by Lindsay Brambles today. 

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It took me a little over a year to complete BECOMING DARKNESS, my YA alternate history novel. That was in 2008. I’d been writing since my teens, back in the Dark Ages, before the advent of home computers, word processors, and the Internet. In those days I cranked things out on a manual typewriter, employing liberal amounts of Whiteout and filling trashcans to overflowing – all in pursuit of a novel worth publishing. It would be decades before I finally felt I’d achieved that. (I told you this was about patience.)

The explosive force of self-publishing – which has completely transformed the publishing landscape – was just beginning to gather steam in 2008. Yet even had it been in the state it is today, I would still have sought traditional publication. There are many reasons for this, not least of which being the fact that in order to succeed at self-publishing you require skills that have little to do with writing. Skills I felt I lacked.

(How long should a synopsis be? Is shorter or longer better?)

So, with a novel in hand, I sought out an agent. If you’ve gone through this process recently, I suspect most of you will agree it’s becoming an increasingly difficult nut to crack. With so many submissions crossing the transom these days, agents are more selective than ever. But even seven years ago, acquiring one was no picnic; rejection was de rigueur, and I ventured into the process fully aware it could be months or (possibly) years before I landed representation – if I landed it at all.

I began by sending out six queries to six top agents. (You might as well start with the best and work your way down.) Anticipating a lengthy wait before responses started to roll in, I was flabbergasted when a few weeks after I mailed my first query, it produced a positive result.

Over the next few months a succession of communications passed between me and the agent who had expressed interest in my work. This culminated in a request for the full manuscript, and by the fall of 2009 I had secured representation. You might assume that by then, some six months after I’d been contacted, things would really start rocking. They didn’t.

My newly acquired agent loved the premise of my novel, but she wanted changes. Not least of which was a considerable reduction in word count and some significant alterations to style. I wasn’t averse to any of this and immediately set about rewriting the novel from top to bottom. It took me at least three months, after which the book was passed on to beta readers.

More rewrites ensued, during which some unexpected bumps in the road resulted in a series of unfortunate delays. Suffice it to say, I spent many, many months waiting. Many.

Finally, in the summer of 2013, my agent began shopping the novel around to publishers. It didn’t take long to find a home for it at Switch Press, the new (then) YA imprint of Capstone Publishers. A contract was signed in October of that same year and from there I expected things to advance swiftly. Yeah, you guessed it: They didn’t. (By now, I’m betting you realize I really wasn’t kidding about this whole patience thing.)

Initially there were hints BECOMING DARKNESS might be scheduled for release in late 2014, which would have been a pretty quick turnaround in the traditional publishing realm. But those hints were vapor, and the spring of the following year looked increasingly more plausible.

In June of 2014, I began working with the editor at Switch Press, a process that was surprisingly painless and quiet brief. Before long, BECOMING DARKNESS entered the copyediting stage, and I had my last look at the manuscript (prior to publication) in December of 2014.

(Writing a synopsis for your novel? Here are 5 tips.)

ARCs of BECOMING DARKNESS were issued in April of 2015, and the novel appeared at the spring Book Expo of America (in New York). I was beginning to get excited. Five months later, on October 1st, my novel officially launched. By then it had been more than seven years since I’d typed the first words of Sophie Harkness’ story. To say I felt some measure of relief that the book had finally reached the hands of readers would be an understatement.

As I said in the beginning: patience. Even if everything goes perfectly, debut writers taking the traditional publishing route can reasonably expect a couple of years to pass before their novels release. So, if you’ve just completed your book and are now dreaming of the day when you’ll see it in stores, keep in mind there may be a little gray in your hair by the time that occurs. Believe me, there’s plenty in mine.

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