Behind the Scenes of Raven's Birth Novel

Behind the Scenes of Raven’s Birth 

  The process of writing this book wasn’t a straight line—it was a storm. Raven’s Birth was born from doubt, grief, and the kind of pain that leaves you gasping. There were tears. There were rewrites. There was a five-year hiatus where the manuscript gathered dust while the world shut down and I tried to survive.

But there was also triumph. There was healing. There was the quiet return of a voice I thought I’d lost.

This story has lived in me for years, clawing its way out one scene at a time. And now, somehow, impossibly—I’m about to publish it.

Come behind the scenes with me. Let me show you what it took to bring Raven’s Birth to life.

The Spark of Inspiration

Every story begins somewhere. For Raven’s Birth, it wasn’t a lightning bolt—it was survival.

After a traumatic breakup left me emotionally shattered and without a home, I found refuge in fiction. I immersed myself in stories where loyalty mattered, where love was earned, and where broken people still got to be heroes. I lived in those worlds because I needed to believe healing was possible.

Late at night, I imagined myself among those characters—fighting beside them, falling in love with them, becoming someone who mattered. Eventually, I realized I didn’t have to borrow someone else’s story. I could write my own.

Lidia Raven was born from that realization. She is me, in many ways—scarred, searching, stubborn. Her journey began as mine did: in the wreckage of something cruel, and the desperate hope that there was more.

As I wrote, the characters took on lives of their own. Some surprised me. Some betrayed me. Some became the anchors I didn’t know I needed. What started as a coping mechanism became a novel. And now, somehow, it’s ready to meet the world.

Building the World

My brain lives in science fiction. Like Lidia, I’ve always dreamed of visiting the stars—and it breaks my heart knowing I’ll never see the day when ordinary people can walk on the moon.

The inspiration for Raven’s Birth came from everywhere. From space cowboys in dusty coats chasing freedom across the galaxy, to starships boldly seeking out new life. From books where a molecule becomes a monster and infiltrates a man’s mind, to video games where you’re constantly saving humanity from extinction. I devoured those stories—watched them, read them, played them—until they became part of me.

The worlds Lidia and the crew of the Aurora travel to are a beautiful blend of all those imagined places. They’re stitched together from longing, escape, and the deep desire to belong somewhere—anywhere—that feels like home.

I didn’t build this world from scratch. I built it from memory, emotion, and the stories that saved me.

Character Development

Lidia Raven isn’t just a protagonist.

She’s a mirror.

She’s me—broken, raw, rebuilt.

I didn’t design her strengths and weaknesses like a checklist. I bled them onto the page. She’s brave because I had to be. She’s resourceful because survival demanded it. She’s loyal because betrayal nearly destroyed me. Her struggle isn’t just with self-doubt or fear of failure—it’s with identity, memory, and the terrifying question of who she is when everything familiar is stripped away.

And the supporting characters? They’re not just narrative tools. They’re lifelines. They came from the darkest parts of my healing. In 2009, I nearly didn’t make it. I was trapped in a relationship that shattered me. But fiction gave me a way out. These characters—Mark, James, Cameron, even Bishop—held pieces of me I couldn’t carry alone. They evolved beyond their inspirations. They argued with me, comforted me, betrayed me, saved me.

Lidia couldn’t have survived without them. And neither could I.

Writing Raven’s Birth wasn’t just storytelling. It was survival. It was reclamation. It was the long, painful process of turning ghosts into voices—and voices into something worth listening to.

The Writing Process

I didn’t write Raven’s Birth with a tidy outline or a perfect routine. I tried setting daily word count goals, but every time I fell short, it felt like another failure. So I stopped measuring progress in numbers. I wrote when I could—sometimes pouring out pages of chaos, sometimes crafting scenes that made me proud.

It started while I was working retail. I’d talk about this wild sci-fi story I was building, and I’d let people read pieces of it. They fell in love with my characters the way I had. That mattered. It gave me momentum. It gave me purpose. I had an audience that cared, and that kept me writing—and writing better.

But when that audience disappeared, doubt crept in. I reread my work and hated it. I questioned everything. What the hell was I thinking? At one point, I erased the entire manuscript and started over from scratch.

This process wasn’t linear. It was a rollercoaster of grief, hope, frustration, and triumph. Every draft was a battle. Every revision was a reckoning. But through it all, I kept going—because the story mattered. Because I mattered.

And now, after all of it, Raven’s Birth is ready to meet the world.

The Role of “Research”

I didn’t research in the traditional sense. I didn’t study mythologies or catalog flora and fauna. My research was emotional. It was lived. It came from the stories I clung to when I had nothing else—fictional worlds where loyalty mattered, where love was earned, and where broken people still got to be heroes.

I absorbed those stories obsessively. They became my escape, my blueprint, my lifeline. I imagined myself inside them, rewriting my own pain into something survivable. That’s where Raven’s Birth came from—not textbooks or folklore, but sleepless nights and a desperate need to feel seen.

The Importance of Editing

Editing was terrifying.

I erased the entire manuscript once. Just wiped it out. I hated what I’d written. I hated myself for thinking I could write. And when I finally thought I was done, I was too scared to reread it—because I knew in my bones it wasn’t good enough. I was afraid I’d delete it again.

So it sat. For five years. Through COVID. Through depression. Through a job I hated and the ache of being away from my partner.

Eventually, I came back to it—not because I believed in it, but because I needed to. I needed to finish something. I needed to reclaim something. And slowly, painfully, I did.

The Journey to Publication

I don’t know anything about publishing. I didn’t query agents. I didn’t chase traditional deals. I chose self-publishing because it was the only path I could see—and thank the stars it exists.

I’m still figuring it out. I’m learning as I go. But I’m here. And Raven’s Birth is real.

Marketing the Novel

Marketing?

What marketing?

I don’t have a strategy. I don’t have a launch team. I don’t have a clue how to get this book into the hands of strangers. If five copies get printed, it’ll be because five family members ordered them—and honestly, that’s okay.

This book was never about going viral. It was about surviving. About healing. About telling the story I needed to tell.

The Reader’s Experience

If you’re reading this—if you’ve read Raven’s Birth—thank you.

Your connection to Lidia, to her struggle, to her triumphs… that’s everything. Some of you have seen things in the story I didn’t even know were there. That’s the magic of fiction. It becomes more than the writer. It becomes yours.

Looking Ahead

I don’t know what comes next.

I have ideas—sequels, new stories, fragments of worlds I haven’t built yet. But for now, I’m just breathing. Just letting myself feel what it means to finish something this big.

Raven’s Birth is the beginning. And I’m still here. Still writing. Still healing.

In the end, Raven’s Birth is more than a novel. It’s a survival story. A reclamation. A love letter to the characters who held me together when I was falling apart. It was written in the aftermath of heartbreak, in the quiet of depression, and in the long, messy process of healing.

I didn’t follow a formula. I didn’t research mythologies or build worlds from blueprints. I imagined them—late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come and I needed somewhere to belong. I erased drafts. I doubted myself. I almost gave up. But the story wouldn’t let me.

This book is proof that broken things can still be beautiful. That stories can save us. That even if only five people read it, it was worth writing.

Thank you for coming behind the scenes with me. I’m still learning, still growing, and still writing. And I can’t wait to share what comes next.