After my brother read my original Mysterious Warriors, he told me it shouldn’t be one book — it needed to be four. I listened to him, and he was completely right. I finished the first book of the quartet… and then immediately faced the challenge of writing the second one.

Broken originally existed as just 44 pages — about 9,400 words — in the first draft. And I remember thinking, How am I supposed to turn this into a full-length novel?

That section of the original book had been the hardest for me to write in the first place, so expanding it felt almost impossible. I wasn’t sure how to make it different from the first book, Unity, while still keeping it strong and interesting.
What ended up helping was expanding the storylines I’d already started in Unity. For example, Rose and Xantos Bronston didn’t even exist in the original version of Mysterious Warriors. I had so much fun developing Xantos in Broken that he eventually became a recurring supporting character in the second and fourth books — someone I hadn’t known anything about in the original story.

The court girls were another big expansion. Originally, Gwen was the only girl at court. Deanna, Kristen, Adeline, and Viola (who’s introduced in Broken) were all added later. I really focused on deepening Gwen’s character and her storyline, along with Ian and Pearl’s story. And I also had fun balancing and expanding Rachel’s arc in ways I never had before.

I knew going in that Broken would be the hardest book of the four to write — but I’m proud to say it went from 44 pages and 9,416 words to a final draft of 326 pages and 76,135 words.
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Quite the glow-up. 😄