When I was twelve, I spent part of my summer vacation at my Aunt Patricia and Uncle Jim’s house in Nampa, Idaho. One day I picked up my mom’s sunglasses, looked in the mirror, and thought, Wouldn’t it be awesome if a superhero wore sunglasses instead of a mask? And just like that, my first superhero idea was born — Sunglasses.

I started by writing a play about a single mom who worked for a lawyer by day and fought crime as Sunglasses by night. She was loosely based on Daredevil, except she had all her senses. A few pages in, I completely scrapped it (the script was HORRIBLE!!).

But I couldn’t let go of the idea.

A few months later, when I was thirteen, I started writing my very first novel — Mysterious Warriors. Originally, Sunglasses was part of a huge superhero team with names like Bombfire, Lightest Hour, Swister, Fightful, Darkest Hour, Abb and Raff, Tiger, Knighter, Courage, Sycamore, Kitty, Heartless, and Breaker. (Yes… there were a lot of them.)

Over the years, many characters were cut or renamed as the story evolved. Sunglasses eventually became Lunette, Bombfire became Bonfire, Lightest Hour turned into Marryn, Fightful became Strike, Knighter became Cabaya, Kitty became Pirata, and Breaker became Sacrifice — while Sycamore stayed the same. It’s funny how much a story can change from when you’re thirteen.

I finished my first draft when I was fifteen and confidently sent a query letter to Simon & Schuster, fully expecting to be published right away. Instead, I received my very first rejection letter.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t discouraged.

Since Mysterious Warriors was meant to be a trilogy, I kept writing. A few years later I wrote the second book, Pirates and War, and by the time I started college, I was working on the third book, Dangerous Warlord. Then in 2008 — about a hundred pages in — I hit the only real writer’s block I’ve ever had. I set it aside and worked on other projects for a while.

In 2011, I picked Mysterious Warriors back up after finishing Lisa Shapiro’s Novel Writing class. As I reread the prologue, I realized something big: I didn’t need to critique the book. I needed to completely rewrite it.

By the following spring semester, I had nearly finished a new draft. In September 2012, I finally worked up the courage to ask my brother to critique it — something I never thought I’d be ready for. Less than a month later, he handed it back and completely tore it apart (not physically… but emotionally, a little 😅).

He told me all my characters had the same personality, that they all slowly turned into me, that almost every superhero name was terrible (except Bonfire and Darkest Hour), and that if I broke the story into four books and made about a million changes, it could actually be something amazing.

So I took his advice.

By October 2012, I only had about a hundred pages left to write of the new first book — and in August 2013, I published Mysterious Warriors: Unity. All in all, I rewrote the series about seven times.

Around that time, one of my critique partners, Elizabeth, shared a website called WordHippo that helps translate words into different languages. Since the name Sunglasses had always bothered readers, I searched for alternatives and discovered that “sunglasses” in French is lunettes de soleil — which eventually inspired the name Lunette.
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And just like that, my very first superhero finally had a name that stuck.