Happy Birthday, Secret Society Girl!

(I had to think long and hard about whether to call this post “happy birthday” or “happy anniversary.” As many of you know, I’m not one who thinks of her books as “babies.” They’re books. And “birthday” seems like a “baby” thing. But it is the day the idea was born. So I’m gonna roll with it.)

From Diana’s Diversions, 1/7/2005:

tingle
I’ve been officially up for several hours now, but awake for even longer. I can’t sleep. I have an idea. A really amazing, mind-numbing incredible idea (aren’t they all at first?) My muse is doing this on purpose, to get me to finish these freaking books! I’ve already spent my Amazon Xmas certificate on research items. Now there are only 100 pages keeping me from my prize of STARTING SOMETHING NEW!!!!!

Let’s talk about how it happened. Earlier that day, I’d been packing for my move to D.C., and had the T.V. on to keep me from getting bored. I was flipping channels, and on T.V. (on TBS or TNT or one of the other basic cable channels) they were showing the movie The Skulls. When I was at Yale, we used to watch this movie and play a drinking game whereby we took a shot every time something completely ridiculous and inaccurate and Hollywoodized happened to the characters.

Later that evening, I was at this fabulous little Tampa bistro called Cafe Anna, and I was elbow deep in cioppino, and I was telling Sailor Boy that I thought this sort of stuff was preposerous and damaging, kind of like how the new Cheaper By The Dozen movie was damaging to people who wanted to understand how writing careers really worked.

“Someone,” I said, sucking the meat out of a king crab leg, “Should write a book showing how these societies really are.”

Sailor Boy cut into his stuffed chicken breast. “That would be boring.”

I thought about that for the next few courses. Not if I wrote it, I finally decided. It would be funny and weird and enlightening. On the way home, I brainstormed. And what I brainstormed as being the main plot of the book actually ended up being a smaller plot point that I can’t really share here for fear of ruining it (because I know you’re all going to be reading it, right? 😉 ).

So anyway, that was the defining moment. Of course, there was much more to it. I had to figure out if I was going to do it, and how (I was trying to deal with requested revisions and finishing a single title romance that had been requested by three agents), and when, and who it was that I was going to write about, which of course is the most important element of all… but all that came much later. This day last year was the day I said to myself: I’m going to write a book about secret societies.

And now, one year later: