On Finding Your Voice
Unexpected lessons from a girl, a burger, and the seventh grade
Hello my lovelies, I have SO MUCH to tell you today!
While publishing remains Publishing™ and there are some things I must keep secret for now, no one can stop me from screaming about the impact you all have had in terms of making people in the industry pay attention to my little dinosaur book. Your reviews have been bonkers amazing. People are sliding into my DMs left and right, telling me they stayed up until two, three, even four in the morning finishing it. Right now, I’m sitting on something incredibly fun that never would’ve happened without reader support. Like I said in my last newsletter, you have the power to push this industry where you want it to go, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who’s requested, read, loved, and otherwise given a huge boost to FOSSIL FEUD. If you’re planning to buy a trophy copy, smash that button!
Also, I have *fourteen* gorgeous paperback ARCs to give away and I am planning to have all the fun with them. Travelling ARCs, giveaways, good causes, appearances, maybe a little bedazzling . . . WHO KNOWS. Here’s a secret: the first giveaway will be happening in the next few weeks, and it will be for my beloved newletter subscribers only!!
All right, that’s enough book news. We now move on to my usual Maggie North Thoughts™.
On Finding Your Voice
Of all the stages of writing a book, drafting is my least favorite by far. FAR. While some writers end up in a staring contest with a blank screen, I mostly end up in a staring contest with my own ego, which likes to point at the typeset version of FOSSIL FEUD and say, in a disappointed voice, “Why can’t you do it like that?”
The trick to drafting is not letting your ego mess with your voice, which is way fucking easier said than done.
My first lesson about voice came in Grade 7, when my irascible-Scotsman teacher put up a chilling poster at the front of the class and told us all to write a descriptive paragraph about it. I searched for the image, but I could only wade through so much AI slop before I lost the will to go on. Here’s an image of five-year-old Buffy the Vampire Slayer shilling for Burger King in 1983, which I feel is close enough:
By seventh grade, I was well aware that I was different from most kids my age. I assumed no one else thought the poster was a creepy Stepford parody of anticipation and enjoyment, and I also wanted to get an A+ in English, so I wrote about crispy lettuce and juicy red tomatoes and how this girl would be truly ecstatic once those totally-not-scary lips were fastened around her burger. Easy.
When my teacher handed our paragraphs back, I literally felt a shock of cold in my body at the red “C+ — see me” written on the top of mine.
At the dreaded meeting, the teacher unexpectedly asked whether I really liked the poster. I said yes — I mean, obviously I did! I’d learned that academic success was about producing the expected results. Unexpected results did not get an A+. Unexpected paragraphs might land you in the school counsellor’s office, where you would have to explain why a perfectly nice advertisement made you feel like you were looking into a Stephen King novel where something that was beautiful on the surface might very well be gangrenous underneath.
Looking back, I think the irascible teacher might have been trying to help me find my voice. Perhaps he was hoping just one student would have the courage to write about how uncanny that poster was. How the girl’s widened eyes were strangely flat and that burger was way too big for her mouth and her lips were pulled practically back to her ears like someone might be screaming, “Smile! Wider! Wider!”
I think about my voice a lot lately, and not just when I’m trying to draft my book.
These days, it’s more important than ever that we don’t dismiss our own voice, and that we use it to name the things that look shiny but don’t pass the smell test. Whether it’s an unsettling poster, an unfair academic system like the one Ripley is fighting in FOSSIL FEUD, or a government that’s telling its citizens not to believe their own eyes, we need our own voices if we’re going to send an unexpected message to the people who want us to be quiet.
We hear your voices from Canada, my friends.
I’M READING
One day a few years ago, I saw a tweet from a writer I sort of knew from online pitching events. Her post read something like, “This place is bad for my mental health — if you want to keep in touch offline, let me know!” I thought it would be presumptuous as hell to ask her to be friends with me, but she was very cool and funny and I didn’t have much to lose, so I awkwardly slid into Stephanie Archer’s DMs.
Hundreds of emails, texts, and voice notes later, I get to read Steph’s books in their early stages, and I can tell you THE WILD CARD — the final instalment in her internationally bestselling Vancouver Storm series — is just as hot, hilarious, swoony, and addictive as the first four books. It’s coming out TOMORROW, and I could not be more fucking excited for my victory reread of Jordan and Tate’s story:
Tate Ward is the best coach in professional hockey, a hot single dad, one of the best players of all time, and my new boss—who likes everyone but me.
The players will do anything for him, the media is obsessed, and the fans still wear his jersey. Everyone’s in love with handsome, authoritative Coach Tate Ward—except me, and the feeling’s mutual.
To save the Vancouver Storm from being sold, though, we need to work together and win the Stanley Cup, and I can’t help but push his buttons to get under his skin.
He moves me into his guest house, though, and makes me sleep in his bed.
He encourages me with the team and tells me I belong.
He’s adorable with his daughter and makes me long for things I shouldn’t.
I try to make him break, but he never loses control—until he finds me crying and fires the person responsible.
And when his brother hits on me, he loses his mind with jealousy.
Beneath his controlled exterior, Tate is protective, playful, and funny. He puts everyone before himself, but when I encourage him to be selfish, I learn that Tate wants…
Me.
The Wild Card is a pro hockey single dad romance. It is the fifth and final book in the Vancouver Storm series but can be read as a standalone.
Wishing you every good thing,
The little heart inside the footprint is damn cute!
Laughing at the girl's smile (Wider!Wider!)
I love your voice (and love you) :)