The Birth of Bombyx: How This Book Nearly Killed Me (In a Good Way)
I didn’t start writing because I had a story burning inside of me.
I started writing because my mom made me.
Seriously. That’s it.
I hated it.
But somewhere between forced essays and sulking at my desk, I realized something—writing meant I could make stuff up. I could create worlds. I could bend the rules. I could give my characters swords and trauma and let them rage against the things I couldn’t name in myself yet.
So, yeah. I got addicted.
At twelve years old, I joined Camp NaNoWriMo and wrote the first draft of what would eventually become Bombyx Biographies: Book One. Back then, it was called Broken: Book One of Promise, and it was…well, a mess. But it was my mess. My first real (fictional) world. My first real main character.
Her name was Alaena. And she was angry.
Like me.
Why Bombyx?
I’ve always been drawn to stories where morality isn’t clean, where heroes break things and the rules, where blood family isn’t always the answer, and found family means everything. Bombyx gave me the space to explore all that—and to ask hard questions about loyalty, justice, and what happens when you cross a line you didn’t even know was there (and even when you do).
Alaena Bombyx is a Latin Magician—a girl who can use the language of her kin to bend the world to her whims. She’s blunt, loyal, unpredictable, and occasionally violent. She’s also based on me at thirteen: undiagnosed bipolar disorder, simmering anger, and a desperate need to feel in control of something, anything in the world where things just happened to me.
So when I say this book nearly killed me in a good way, I mean it cracked me open. It made me face things I didn’t want to. It taught me to give my characters grace even when they were wrong—and, eventually, to give myself some too.
What Bombyx Means to Me
Some writers talk about their characters like they’re family.
Mine are more like a chaotic group of best friends, crushes, and people I would fight with my training sword—but love anyway.
They’re messy. They don’t always say the right things. They make bad decisions and suffer for them. But they’re real and carry parts of me and those I’ve known I didn’t know how to share with the world until now.
Bombyx Biographies isn’t just a fantasy novel with swordfights and magical creatures (though it has plenty of both). It’s the book that made me a writer. It’s the place I went when I didn’t know who I was, and the world I built to survive.
So if you’re reading it—or even just thinking about it—thank you.
And if you’re a writer still buried in the mess of your first story, wondering if it’s worth finishing: yes. It is. Even if it nearly kills you, too.
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