Darcy Marks: On the Afterlife As Setting

Darcy Marks is a 2nd Degree Black Belt in Kempo-JuJitsu, as well as a Black Belt in Arnis, the Filipino art of stick-fighting. She teaches women’s self-defense and works as a forensic toxicologist. Darcy is a mother of three is and an avid fangirl living in northern Vermont. Visit her online at DarcyMarks.com, and find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

In this post, Darcy discusses the process of writing her new middle grade fantasy novel, Grounded For All Eternity, how the idea came to her, and more!

Name: Darcy Marks
Literary agent: Victoria Wells Arms
Book title: Grounded For All Eternity
Publisher: Aladdin/Simon & Schuster
Release date: July 26, 2022
Genre/category: MG Fantasy
Elevator pitch for the book: When Mal and his friends slip through the veil from their neighborhood in Hell into the mortal world, they accidentally release the soul of one of the architects of the Salem Witch Trials into modern day Salem, Massachusetts. Now they must recapture the soul, save the people of Earth, and get home before Salem gets wiped off the map, or worse yet, their parents find out.

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This book is basically me in a nutshell. I have loved all things mythological since I was a kid, and the Salem Witch Trials were a bit of an obsession of mine when I was younger, but I can tell you the moment everything coalesced.

I was walking my kids home from school on one of those perfect autumn days, where it was cool and crisp, and the air smelled like fallen leaves. A breeze kicked up and the leaves on the sidewalk made a skittering sound against the concrete, and Mal’s world was born. I could see him walking down his cobblestone streets, but the leaves have legs and there’s fire at the horizon, because Mal lives in Hell … but just the residential part.

The plot and Mal’s voice came later, but that’s when it all started.

From idea to submission was about three years, with the time to publication adding another two years and some months, so a total of five-plus years. The offer from Aladdin/Simon & Schuster came in February of 2020, and the world changed a lot …

Even over all that time the idea never really changed. What changed was finding the right voice, and fully developing the world. I originally wrote Grounded in third person, but something wasn’t right. I decided to rewrite the book in first person and that was better, but it wasn’t until I really knew who Malachi was, with all the accompanying ego and snark that the voice felt like him.

From there I went back and forth with my fabulous agent, Victoria Wells Arms, on the world-building and incorporating more mythology and depth to make sure the world I was envisioning was clear on the page. When the offer came, and I spoke to Kristin Gilson about Grounded I knew it had found the perfect home with Aladdin/Simon & Schuster. She knew exactly what I was trying to do!

This was all new to me, and although I had done my research, and my publisher had help guides in the Author Portal on what to expect, I would say the biggest surprise was when we reached the copy edit stage. My copyeditor was amazing, watching video tours of buildings I used and really getting into the details, so much beyond what I was expecting for that level of edits!

Everyone I’ve worked with at S&S cares so much about the books and it’s honestly humbling to have people working on something you’ve put your all into. And although I knew to expect it, the publishing journey really is very much hurry up and wait.

I’m not sure this counts as a surprise, but I did find that the best way to really develop the world I wanted, as fully as I wanted it, was to keep asking questions. OK, my main character lives in an afterlife, what does that mean? How would you view death if you knew for a fact it was just a transition? If you lived in a world with a variety of species of people, what would you think of Earth with only one? If you’d always had wings, what would you think about heights? All of that impacts not only voice, but how your characters interact with the plot.

I think this idea can definitely be something a lot of adults should internalize as well, but I’m going to focus on my child readers here. I hope first and foremost that they have a lot of fun reading, because I am of the firm belief that reading should be fun.

But I really hope they walk away with the conviction that deciding who they are should be something that is completely up to them. Who cares what other people think? You know yourself better than anyone else. Stay true to that and stay true to your convictions. That’s what matters.

One piece?! I’m going to cheat a little and blend two bits: Read, read, read in your genre, outside of your genre, but recent! (Not what you read as a kid.) Attending workshops and seminars are fantastic, but part of that continual learning really needs to come from what is being published now.

Don’t just focus on learning about publishing as an industry, focus on craft. It all works together to make you a stronger writer and if traditional publishing is your goal (it doesn’t have to be), reading recent books will expose you to current styles of writing, some of which you may like, and some you may not, but it can help you find your own storytelling style/voice.

Also bonus advice, persistence is key.

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