The Calling
- Megan M. Maddox
- Jun 4
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 17
“To the unseen hands that guide us. The invisible strings that bind us. The friends and lovers who inspire us. The mentors who believe in us, and the students who teach us.”
Welcome to my archives! This YA Romantasy blog will showcase character spotlights, highlight relationship dynamics, behind the scenes cannon and writing processes, offer deleted scenes, as well as chapters from different characters point of view, and much more. First, though, I’d like to start on a summarized timeline of the lifelong dream that’s taken me to YA Romantasy.
My dream of becoming an author started every night before bed. That’s when my mom would read to my older sister and I. Together, the three of us sailed mystical oceans in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis. We sang alongside Dwarves in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. We strode through haunted graveyards with Mary Dawning Hahn. Rode on the backs of spectral horses with Janni Lee Sinner. Explored the tragic horizons of World War Two with Lois Lowry. Crossed paths with Goblins in the works of George MacDonald, and learned what it means to be human via the many lessons of Peter S. Beagle. I don’t remember the author or even the title of every book we read. What I distinctly recall is the hope, inspiration and imagination those works instilled in me. Hope, inspiration, and imagination that I wanted to share with anyone who would listen.
I was six when I started writing my own children’s books.
When I was eleven, I read and temporarily became enthralled by Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. That was when I started writing adult fantasy.
I couldn’t enter a movie theatre without a pad of paper so that I could scribble down notes by the light of a flickering screen, continuously as inspired by the plots and characters I saw depicted in cinema as I was by those in my favorite books. When I ran out of paper, my palms and forearms became my canvas. These parts of me were almost always covered in ink.
There were nights I couldn’t sleep. I found myself repeatedly getting up to document whatever poetic thought or accurate description or exciting idea came to me. Thoughts of writing occupied my mind almost every hour of every single day. For me, writing wasn't simply escapism from a childhood that hadn’t exactly been ideal. For me, writing was, and is everything, including therapy. It’s magic. Writers might be the only people in existence who can live in any world and in any time of their choosing with no limits save the limits of their own imaginations. I wanted to soothe myself. With a want that bordered on physical, I wanted to soothe those who found themselves as dispossessed by the real world as I am.
This obsession followed me throughout the years, but as the years went by, I began to suspect that becoming an author was too flimsy a ground on which to stake my whole livelihood. I went to college and majored in Criminal Justice with an objective of joining the Profiling Unit of the FBI.
Of course, life had other plans.
In 2014, two consecutive events would forever change the direction of my pursuits...or maybe bring me back to them. I lost funding for college, and a suicide close to the family led to the additional loss of two of the people in my life who I held closest to my heart. I spiraled into the deepest, darkest pit I’d ever known.
In the wake of those events, I began practicing art again, and I began my first full-length novel. For more than five years, I bled, and dreamed onto pages.
By late 2018, I’d produced something I couldn’t have been more proud of. I was ready to publish. Stupidly, I hadn’t known anything about the actual world of publishing or industry standards in advance. I’d only known that my passion for writing went beyond any other need or desire. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the single work I’d written was more like three works, with extremely long, extremely detailed chapters. If there were any hope of that work being considered by agencies, it would need to be redone…but I was done. Even if I’d had the energy to keep going with that project, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Life was about to happen again.
In August, 2018, my beautiful mother had a stroke.
In Spring of 2019, I had my own near death experience following complications from Type 1 Diabetes caused by the bursting of an ovarian cyst. Surviving that gave me new perspective. Despite the rigorous struggles of the last five years, I knew I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to keep living the way I’d been living, either.
It was time to move on.
In early 2022, with the help and support of my longtime SO, I moved to Pennsylvania in hopes of a new beginning. I was in that part of the country less than two months before my best friend, Melissa, swooped in and saved my two cats and I from what would have undoubtedly been another hellacious experience. The three of us went to live with Melissa in Eastern Idaho.
At this point, I was freaking miserable. I was sleeping in the tiny bed of bestie’s five-year-old daughter, who was now having to sleep with her momma so that I’d have a room in which to stay. Less than a year later, I lost the remote job that had been sustaining me through all of this travel and trial.
You might imagine that after several months of unemployment, I was getting totally desperate, and you’d be right. I wanted to start writing again, but I had to survive.
I started submitting as many resumes as I could without hardly even bothering to look at where I was applying.
In August 2023, I was hired at a local school.
I got the job as a Paraprofessional immediately, and then it was on to training. I quite vividly remember standing in that big, depressing gymnasium thinking, “This is where dreams go to diiiiie…”
I seriously thought my dreams were over, and I had no more you know what’s to give.
…But Mark, the man who hired me, was a truly kind person. He believed in me. He was willing to give me a chance, which was all I needed at the time.
The end of the day came, and when I went to sign my paperwork, the air in my lungs slowed.
Mark had placed me with him in Arts and Humanities. I’d always known that if I could teach a class, I’d want it to be Arts and Humanities.
Not only did Mark believe in me, upon learning this, he let me devise some of the lessons.
The months that came were the happiest, most magical months of my entire life. To my surprise, I fell head over heels in love with every kid in those classes. It was like being reunited with a bunch of old friends from past lives. For the first time since I was also a young adult, my tired soul lightened.
While I taught or assisted in teaching the students art, folklore and history, they made me remember how to live. By seeing me for who I was, they reminded me of who’ I was becoming.
Although many of these youths uplifted and elated me, two were particularly monumental in the development of my lifelong aspirations. Both are exceptional humans. Both are remarkably intelligent. Both are insanely talented. Both completely love to read…and I’d been needing to write. I’d never written for a teenage audience, and I’d never written Romantasy, but I figured it was a popular genre. I wanted to give my new audience something they might not have seen before.
Thus, the seed of Pivotal Dawn was planted.
I started writing Grinning Dragon. Each page my young teachers devoured spurred that seed to keep growing, and growing, and growing… Not only did these first beta readers approve. It seemed like they couldn’t get enough.
When, earlier the next year, one of those young adults came and told me that they’d dressed as my male lead, Dominic, for “Dress As Your Favorite Character” day, I could have screamed with adoration and appreciation. When the other student, (normally a very composed and calculated girl), finished Chapter Twelve of Grinning Dragon and entered my classroom wiggling and blushing – speechless with excitement, I could have hugged her until she popped, (obviously I didn't though).
Three years in, and I have a finished series.
Even though my time at the school has been over for more than two years, those kids still inspire me every single day.
Their love, their support of my work, and their overall goodness is a constant presence in my life. Because they believed in me, I have gotten brave enough to believe in myself…
And here we are at a brand new chapter.
Every path I’ve taken – every step I’ve fumbled – every well I’ve climbed out of has led me back to writing, a calling that can no longer be avoided, or denied. That’s why I write: because I have no other choice. I write to give people hope. I write to make people feel. I write to connect. I write to save the world, and myself.
I know firsthand that sometimes nightmares are real. Luckily, the same is true for dreams. Ironically, that’s the premises of my upcoming series. Strange as it is, it’s true what they say. That life imitates art… Then again, maybe it’s the other way around. After all, magic is as real as the characters we create. I, myself, am determined to write until I break through to my own happy ending on the other side of the page, or the weight of those pages crushes me. You know. Whatever happens first…
Thank you so very much for taking the time for a more in-depth peek into my roots! I hope you’ll join me on my next post for musings about some of the trials and inspirations behind Pivotal Dawn, and why I chose YA Romantasy.
See you there!
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