How I Got Cursed

I'm one of those writers who has a very visual mind. When I have an idea, I can literally see it in my head, where it will stay until I figure out what to do with it. Cursed is one of my older stories, one that has changed quite a bit over the years. At first I was going to set it in the Spanish Inquisition, but I decided the setting wasn't working out for me, so I modernized it. The characters and the central plot always stayed the same, but some of the circumstances have been drastically different from what I'd originally intended.

And that isn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite actually. I'm much happier with the direction Cursed is going now than I was before. I even know how I'm going to end the series. No, of course I'm not going to tell you. I'm a tease, but I'm not the spoiler alert type. Usually.

Believe it or not, the first thing I thought of when I created Cursed was the prologue. In previous versions, I had described how Constance found Dro, a little girl with dark hair wandering in a forest and finding a pale baby in burned earth. Don't ask me how or why I came up with that image, because I honestly don't know. All I remember thinking at the time was: "How did the baby wind up there? Why was she there? Who's going to look after her?" Enter, Constance.

I always knew that Dro would have white hair and pale eyes, and I always knew that Constance would need to look as opposite as possible. I wanted an interesting dynamic that the other characters and the readers wouldn't be expecting.

In the chapter I'm currently working on, which needs a lot more work than I realized before I post it at the end of the month (I'm changing things around again but it's for the greater good!), we're getting more of an idea as to what Dro might be. As such, I've been doing more reading on mythology and lore, which is almost as fun as writing. I love learning new things, especially when it involves monsters and mayhem.

So yeah, that's a little more insight into how Cursed started, and how it's been morphed and altered to refine what I'm really envisioning: a fast-paced story about devotion and family, and the dangers people are willing to face to keep their loved ones safe. Can you tell that I just wrote something intense just before doing this post? Thought so.

If you want to see more images that inspired me for this series, feel free to check out my Cursed Pintrest board. For that I will issue a spoiler warning, and you're more than welcome to leave comments and guesses below. All I'm going to say is that my mind works in a mysterious way. ;)

Amy