Twenty Years Later, I Finally Finished the Book

For almost twenty years, I had a story I hadn't finished.

Not because I stopped caring about it. Not because I ran out of ideas. Life simply got louder.

I joined the Navy. I became a mother. I got out the military and went to school. I became a physician assistant. I built a career. I got married - then divorced. I eventually found my way back into the military and became an officer. I went back to school—more than once. I moved, deployed, worked, raised children, treated patients, and did all the things life required of me.

And somewhere in the background, Pendant of Echoes waited.

The Story Before It Was Pendant of Echoes

The earliest version of this story began nearly twenty years ago. It wasn't the book that exists today. Honestly, I don't think I even knew exactly what it was going to become.

But the idea was there.

There were characters I couldn't quite forget. A world that hadn't been fully built yet. Pieces of a story that would pop back into my head from time to time and remind me that I had once started something I never finished.

For years, that was enough.

I didn't call myself a writer. I certainly wasn't planning a career as an author. I was focused on medicine, the military, my family, school, and whatever happened to be directly in front of me.

Storytelling was something I loved, but it lived quietly in the background.

Until it didn't.

Coming Back to the Story

Eventually, I reached a point where I started thinking differently about what I wanted the next chapter of my life to look like.

I had accomplished many of the things I'd set out to do. I had built a career I was proud of. But I also started asking myself a different kind of question:

What else do I want to create?

Somehow, that question led me back to this story.

At first, writing was simply a creative outlet. I wasn't thinking about publishing. I wasn't thinking about building a website or finding beta readers or learning an entirely new industry.

I just started writing.

And then something happened.

The characters got louder.

The world got bigger.

Asemi stopped feeling like a setting I was inventing and started feeling like a place I was discovering.

Emberheart emerged. Then Veilwilds, Stonereach, Tidelands, Dusklands, Galerise, Ashveil, and more. History started connecting to magic. Magic started connecting to memory. And the story I had carried around for years began becoming something much larger than the version I originally imagined.

Most importantly, I fell in love with writing it.

Then I Wrote “Everybody was wrong" -- And ended the book.

There is something strange about finishing a story you've carried for almost twenty years.

By the time I reached the end of the manuscript, Pendant of Echoes had grown into more than 57,000 words and a world with its own history, rules, relationships, mysteries, and future.

And then one day, there was no next chapter to write.

I had finished the book.

Not the idea. Not an outline. Not the thing I was going to write someday.

The book.

I don't think I realized until that moment how much unfinished things can quietly stay with you. This story had followed me through different versions of myself, and the woman who finally finished it was very different from the young woman who first imagined it.

Maybe that's why it needed the time.

Twenty Years Wasn't Too Late

It's easy to look at something you've put down for years and decide you've missed your chance.

I could have done that with this book.

Instead, nearly twenty years later, I'm preparing to introduce Zaylin and Asemi to readers for the first time.

There are beta readers now. A website. Publishing decisions. A growing series behind this first book. There are spreadsheets and deadlines and things I didn't even know I needed to know when I started writing again.

And there are still moments when I look at all of this and think:

Wait. Am I really doing this?

Apparently, I am.

Pendant of Echoes isn't the same story I started all those years ago. And I'm not the same person who started it. I think that's the point.

Some dreams arrive fully formed and demand your attention immediately. Others wait. They grow quietly alongside you until you're finally ready to become the person who can carry them where they were supposed to go.

This one waited for me.

Twenty years later, I finally finished the book.

And real talk? It feels like I'm just getting started.

— Rasheda Sadler