Where Did The Crystal Princess Come From?

Pictured above: the first page of a 12-page document I created on my iPad ten days after the drive where The Crystal Princess was reborn.

The Crystal Princess began the way many great stories have.

As fanfiction.

Sixteen-year-old me wrote it on fanfiction.net in the time between helping my family, doing chores, and trying to survive what felt like an eternal high school sentence.

What started as a fanfiction for Kannazuki no Miko (IYKYK, my anime girlies out there), was left unfinished after five chapters and 22,078 words, last updated in October of 2013.

I don't remember the version of me in 2013 that decided not to finish it.

I was twenty, working full time, and I guess stories about girls falling in love did not feel as magical when I was working at a dry cleaner and my own relationship did not feel like the love stories I craved.

Years went by and I stopped writing.

The story of many of us who love words: falling in love with characters and then, for one reason or another, losing touch with that part of ourselves.

Life gets in the way.

Sometimes we get in our own way.

It wasn't until I found myself driving across the Appalachian Mountains at two in the morning, exhausted, with my then-wife sleeping in the passenger seat, our dog at her feet, and my father snoring in the back in that way I will never forget, with our cats nearby, that The Crystal Princess came back.

I was twenty-nine.

Driving home to Wisconsin from New Jersey.

Alone in the way a Jeep full of seven souls can be.

The mountains stood pitch black against a slightly lighter sky, towering around me like giants daring me to stay awake.

That's when she came back.

But this time she was no longer an anime heroine I had written into a magical world long ago.

This time she was a woman carrying the weight of lives on her shoulders.

And after life had taught me so much, and was only beginning to teach me more, she wanted me to bring her into the world.

I didn't think of the story so much as experience it.

For hours, until dawn broke, I watched it unfold in my mind.

A young woman with a history she didn't know.

A world being devoured.

A power living inside her that still could not protect her from loss.

I brought pieces from the original Crystal Princess fanfiction with me.

Crystal magic.

Crystal beasts bonded to a royal lineage.

But it wasn't until that long drive and that vivid daydream that I finally saw the truth of the world that would eventually reveal itself to both the characters and the reader.

When I got home, I started writing.

My first notes are dated August 2022.

It took until July 2024 to finish my dream.

I worked for hours whenever I could make the time.

After work.

On weekends.

Sometimes for fifteen minutes.

Sometimes for five hours.

My goal had been to finish before my birthday.

The night before my thirty-first birthday, I did.

I finished the first draft of what would become the first two books in the series.

Then it sat.

For almost two more years.

And that's okay.

So if you have a file somewhere, whether it's been a year or five, or maybe it still only exists in your mind:

Take it from me.

It doesn't matter how long the journey takes.

Stories are patient.

They wait for us.

Yours,

Maritza Bermudez Alonso