I started writing this novel seven years ago.

It was in the wake of writing in the 3 Day Novel Writing Contest. I wrote a western over a long weekend, and then felt cocky. I started out thinking I would continue to push the concept of the contest, to just write fast and hard, and play with genres and plot premises that were fun and easy.

I thought I'd take on the genre of YA fantasy. In my work as as an assistant at a literary agency, I'd seen way too many submissions of this kind of book. There were plenty of things I liked about YA: it's about a really interesting time of life, it can have great dialogue and honest portrayals about kids and their families and environments, and it can play with truly creative concepts. There were also fatal flaws that I saw repeated ad infinitum in the submissions I read: flat characters, overwrought emotion, lazy plot twists that assumed kids wouldn't notice or care.

So I thought I'd build a better mousetrap with a quick novel I wrote on evenings and weekends when I came home from the office. I chose a setting that was familiar and beloved: Providence, Rhode Island. I chose a premise that was close to my heart: Nightmares.

Within a few months, I knew I was in over my head. The quick decisions I'd made about my characters weren't working out. I'd written a villain who I ended up liking a lot. The real-life setting of the city of Providence offered some great detail, but pinned me down in actual fact too much. The plot almost but didn't quite make sense. I scrapped it and started over, feeling confident from the lessons I'd learned the first time around that I'd quickly resolve my issues.

Seven years and ten drafts later, I have the novel that's burning a hole in my hard drive. The glib mission I'd set for myself is long-forgotten. It's no longer a YA fantasy, but a literary fiction horror show. I ate a lot of hubris in this process and came out knowing so much more about writing, reading, and dreaming.

The Other Island is a story of family and friendship. It's about loyalty and betrayal. It's about conflicting desires that dig deep under the skin. It's about being more than one person in a lifetime. It's about the stories we tell about ourselves. It takes familiar fairy tales and myths and recombines them to make a new world.

I wrote this book for me, but I also wrote it for you, and I hope you like it.