K. M. Morris

Writing a book is the easiest thing in the world. Writing a good book is a lot harder. Like a level of difficulty comparable to saddling a wild horse, then sitting it in a highchair and spoon-feeding it tapioca.

Who knew that arranging words into sentences could be so hard? Well, to be fair, we do it constantly, what with the whole talking thing... but, seriously, how often does something profoundly moving or meaningful come out of your mouth? Sit down at your keyboard and try to put one hundred thousand words together in a way that will make someone, somewhere (hopefully a whole lot of someones!) go "Wow! That changed my life!"

That's what I want. I don't just want to write books. I've done that once, already. No it wasn't published. I didn't try to get it published: it sucked. Really. I was twenty-five. Yes, I know there are lots of very talented, young geniuses out there who have published life-altering works before hitting puberty. That's not me. I had to marinate. Ripen. Whatever you want to compare it to: maybe I just had to hit forty and realize that time was running out. These books have been sitting in my head, getting bigger and bigger, for as long as I can remember.

One of the earliest questions I remember asking my Mum, (possibly while standing in my playpen) was, "Where's the other girl?" My Mum was perplexed as mums are when their children ask those egocentric questions little children ask without filling in the topical blanks. Ie: "Mother, I feel there should have been another child born from thy loins on the momentous occasion of my birth, yet I have seen her not."

"What girl?" Mum responded.

"The other girl," I remember insisting, impatiently. I think I even tapped my own chest in indication that I meant the "other me".

Of course, Mum shrugged it off as one of those inane things a parent never understands. I have never forgotten it, because I could see twins clearly in my head. They never left me: The twins. They grew, and changed, and they became something almost completely separate from me, and bit by bit, their story unfolded in my head. I was in my teens before I realized that normal people don't have full movies of their own making in their heads 24/7.

I was in my mid-teens when I realized I should probably try writing this thing down, even if only for posterity. I scribbled it down in notes and points. Once I had all of the details down I would write the actual books. That was the teenager's plan. Then life happened. It happened like a car-jacking. It got ugly.

I'm not a multitasker. Even now, as I write this, my kids are asking me questions and talking to me and I have no idea what they are saying. Don't worry, no one's on fire; I don't hear screaming or smell smoke. The point being I could not write very well during the "interesting" stage of my life. It lasted for more than twenty years, that "interesting" stage. I call it "interesting" because of an old Arabic curse: "May you live in interesting times." When you read history you only learn about the "interesting" times: upheaval, wars, disease, genocide, etc. No one ever writes about the peace and quite. Peace and quite is boring. Life finally got boring for me in 2011. I like boring, as far as life is concerned. A "boring" life gives me time to write interesting stories.

Well, that's enough about me. Oh, but if you're curious: the House of Lamia is the first of three trilogies for Ganieda. What can I say? When you have someone stuck in your head for four decades, it takes at least nine books to get them out. Hope you enjoy the books, folks!