As an author, one of the questions I get asked most often is, “how do you come up with the ideas for your stories?” Truthfully, I’ve never really had a good answer to this question. I’ve always been a writer and a storyteller at heart, and there is never a time when a story (or five) isn’t floating around in my mind. The characters and stories I create are born out of everything, and yet nothing at all.
But, when people ask me that question, that’s not really the answer they want to hear. They want to hear about the moment inspiration struck and I could do nothing but put pen to paper. Fellow authors will know that’s not how it works, but the audience loves a little drama.
In the name of the game, I thought I would take some time today to tell the story about where Heir of Ashes came from, and how I came to know Phoenix and Dorian as the characters they are today.
The very first draft of Heir of Ashes began in 2012 on Wattpad, as a fanfiction. Now, the truth of what kind of fanfiction will remain a secret between me and the very few people remaining who were in my life when it existed. I’m sure you can imagine the quality of a 2012 fanfiction written by a 14-year-old obsessed with vampires. Yikes.
Here are a few things to note about the first draft of Heir of Ashes:
It was called Runner, Runner. Actually, it was called Runner Runner until 2021, when I decided to publish.
It was dystopian.
Phoenix’s name was Ash (we’ll get to this in a moment) and she was blonde.
The spice was horrendous (I was 14, cut me some slack).
It was over 150,000 words of nonsense.
Before we get to the “then and now” portion of this discussion, I have a story to share. Now, anyone who knows anything about Wattpad knows it is a serialized fiction platform, meaning authors often published a chapter or a couple chapters at a time, allowed their audience to react, then published more. This was how I was publishing my works at the time.
So, for the first few chapters of what was then Runner, Runner, I only referred to my leading lady as “Ash,” but I hinted that it was a nickname. A friend I had at the time was reading my story, and one day at lunch, she asked me what Ash’s full name was. At the time, it was supposed to be Ashley. However, before I could answer, this friend continued on to say, “I hope it isn’t Ashley, that would be stupid.”
Cue the heartbreak. Internal, of course.
In the blink of an eye, perhaps the fastest reaction I’ve ever had to anything in my life, I shot back, “It’s Phoenix Ashburn, thank you very much.”
And so, Phoenix Ashburn was born.
Over the next seven years, I would rewrite Runner, Runner 15 times. Each time, the story changed drastically. There were versions where Phoenix became a kind of mutant vampire who only drank vampire blood. There were versions where she goes crazy and kills her Runners before becoming a vampire. There were YA versions. There was a version where Dorian and Phoenix fuck in a room with a dead body after they drain it dry (sometimes I regret not adding this scene into Master of Flames somehow).
During the later years, somewhere between 2018 and 2021, I was old enough that I knew publishing was what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be an author. I wanted to share my books with the world. At the time, however, I genuinely believed that traditional publishing was the only way to do that.
On Runner, Runner, and several other books I wrote and queried throughout those years, I received 327 rejections.
Do you know how it feels to be told “thanks but no thanks” 327 times?
It sucks.
It hurts.
It almost destroyed my dream.
But here’s the thing. When I was writing to be traditionally published, I was writing in boxes defined by the industry that didn’t necessarily fit my style of writing. And so, my writing was not the best version of itself - nor the most authentic.
And so, in early 2021, I decided to self-publish.
I did hours upon hours of research. Days. Weeks. Months. I learned industry standards and best practices. I learned how to title a book, how to write a book, and how to market a book. I studied what good book covers looked like and invested in design, editing, and formatting. Runner, Runner became Heir of Ashes. The story became a duology, and for the first time, Master of Flames was born.
Heir of Ashes published March 1, 2022.
I wanted to touch on a few things that have stayed the same over the years:
Phoenix always had a younger sister. Her name sometimes changed, and her role in the story was almost always different, but she remained in some form in every draft of the story.
Dorian was always the Coven Master, and Stella was always the Successor. No matter how many other characters changed, these two remained the same.
I find these things particularly interesting, because even though ultimately the story belongs to Phoenix and is about her, I didn’t actually get her character right until 2021. There was always something missing, something that didn’t feel quite right. I was afraid to write an unlikeable female character. I thought if I truly leaned into Phoenix’s narcissism, I was creating a book no one would read. In reality, once I stepped into Phoenix as a villain, as a morally gray character, the story filled out and became everything it was ever meant to be.
So, that’s the story of Heir of Ashes. I’m writing this post in 2024, which means Phoenix and Dorian have been a part of my life in some form or another for 12 years - almost half my life. I grew up with them. I learned how to write with them. In so many ways, they are the sparks that made my dream of becoming an author come true.
No matter what other stories I write and books I publish, it will always come back to them and a dream.
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