Pulchra Arcanum

Setting the Scene

It's September 2018. I had just been married at the first of the month and have a countdown to November 1 when National Novel Writing Month begins. I have been participating for almost 10 years and this is the first year my brand new husband gets a front row seat to my insanity.

I'm sitting in my chair at work during a really slow moment in the bank. I have an internet browser pulled up and I am perusing the forums on the nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) website. (*author note: nanowrimo was a nonprofit program designed to help writers write 50,000 words in a 30 day period. It started in 1999 as a challenge between friends and quickly became an international tradition. After a scandal in 2022/2023 time frame the nonprofit went downhill quickly and the final year was 2024. I personally stopped after the 2023 drama unfolded.) I know that I want to win the challenge this year and in order to do that I need a really tantalizing story idea. But I'm drawing a blank.

Inspiration Strikes!

I want to try something new. I want something that will require me to do some research and stretch myself a bit. I play with the idea of a gypsy/Romani story idea but that was struck down by people in the forums as being culturally poor in taste. So I decided to keep looking. At the time I was re-watching the BBC show Merlin and decided voila! Here was a great idea. Something to do with King Arthur and his friend Merlin.

But this is such an over told story! How can I make it unique?

In all of the depictions I had ever seen or read (which was admittedly a very small handful of options), Merlin and Arthur were these amazing characters who had so much going for them and everyone loved them. So what if they weren't?

I love the BBC depiction of Morgan le Fey. She's so pretty and her character is so rich with growth. I wanted to write about her. And somewhere in my research I found a prompt to write a story from the villain's perspective. Win-win!

Step One: Main Character

I did very little research into the myth of Camelot. Embarrassingly little. I jumped head first into character development. I didn't want to use the name Morgan (mostly because it was on my list of names for a potential child one day and I had promised myself I would never use a name of a character I wrote for one of my children) so I had to come up with something else.

I went to my trusty name website (behindthename.com) and started doing some searches for names. I had several that fit the general vibe I wanted and put it up to a poll with my friends. I landed on Megara with a nickname of Meggy. And I started character design.

I knew I wanted her to be blond. There are so many brunette characters in fiction. And especially since the original concept was writing from a villain's point of view it felt right to have a blonde villain. I thought it was clever, okay?

Step Two: Conflict

What made Meggy a villain? Why was she evil? Why am I writing a story from her perspective? What is her ambition? These are the questions I asked myself. I like the saying "there's two sides to every story" and that was the tagline to Pulchra for a very long time. So I decided to look at it from Merlin's point of view. What did he see in Meggy that made her a villain? The best thing I could come up with was jealousy. Why would Merlin, a magical sorcerer, be jealous of a young girl?

He has no magic, of course.

But if he has no magic, how does he play into King Arthur's life? Where does Excalibur come into play?

Meggy has Merlin's magic. And he is angry about it.

Step Three: Allies

So I know Meggy is my main character (who is seeming less and less like a villain, but that's fine) but who else is in her life? Well, every witch needs a familiar. So that began the search to find an animal sidekick. I looked up the natural wildlife for the UK (because where else would Camelot be?) and came up with a list of options to present to my friends. And I'm talking options. At one point, I considered a deer of some kind. My friends and I finally landed on a stoat. Those buggers are cute! Again, very little research went into this decision. Most of my research for stoats didn't happen until book two. I'm really terrible with research.

Now that my animal type was picked out? What would his name be?

I wanted Meggy to name him. That much was clear. By now I knew she spent most of her life in hiding (thanks, Merlin) so she would be very sheltered. And she's very book smart. How would she describe this creature? I thought about what he might look like and what she might know. And, admittedly, his first name was not the most realistic for that question. The stoat was originally named Luter Terram (or, Latin for Land Otter). Before publishing it got changed to Superus which is Latin for Otherworldly. It fit better.

Now, who were her human allies?

I wanted the book to be written in two perspectives. And I wanted the second perspective to be from a man who understood the world better than her and who would love her for who she was, villain and all. I have a type, and I wanted to be attracted to my own character. Five years later some reel on Instagram would point out that I married my main character (by traits, not appearance. I actually would not be attracted to Leo's physical appearance in the least. He's designed to be conventionally attractive.) but that's beside the point.

Leo's name came to me very easily. I had his nickname picked out before I had the rest of his name. (His surname didn't come to me until book two) I had to list all the possible names for Leo and decide which one I wanted.

Step Four: Inktober 2018

Because this was my first project that I was doing that was stretching my creative juices I spent October taking the "inktober" prompts and writing something every single day. Usually it was a short scene. Once and a while the scene went longer and became a chapter. But I used each daily prompt to write something new in this world. It was a lot of fun finding my way through. Not many of the snippets appeared in my first draft but it gave me a bunch of ideas.

Step Five: Draft One

1 November 2018

I started the book!

I was using my trial version of Scrivener. I had all of my Inktober prompts saved. I had pictures saved. I had all of my notes in one place. And I got started. As I wrote I sent each days' worth of writing to my friends. My maid of honor, my lifetime best friend, my husband. Around 1,667 words each day sent to them to read and let me know what they thought. And by the end of the month I had hit my 50,000 words goal. My story changed a lot in that one month in that first draft. And I immediately put it away and didn't look at it for years.

Fast Forward to December 2023

My reading buddy and I were talking about books. I let slip that I had published a book in 2018 and had another one that had been sitting untouched for years. She left my home with her own copy of my novel and a digital copy of my first draft. Months later she came back to me with the best news. She had loved it. And she saw the potential in it. I set goals with her help and support. And months later I finished draft two. October 2024 I began inquiring after an agent and sent Pulchra to an editor. Here we are in May 2025, 6.5 years after I wrote the first draft, working on the publishing path.

How Pulchra Came to be:

1. Main Character

2. Conflict

3. Allies

4. Inktober

5. NaNoWriMo 2018

6. Re-read/draft 2 January 2019

7. Let it marinate on my laptop

8. Lost the ending in a computer transfer in 2020

9. Finish a basic ending 2020

10. Give to Sabrina in December 2023

11. Finish draft August 2024

(Start drafting book 2)

12. Query agents October 2024

13. Begin self publishing process May 2025

14. PUBLISH AUGUST 2025