THE SEED IS PLANTED
How a Tweet Became a Book
Welcome to Monday Mermaid Musings where I talk about my new book The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, March 19, 2024) and how much of the story was created. I hope you enjoy these tidbits as I hope to extend the conversation around the book beyond the mythology, lovely as that is most of the time.
1 April 2024
“The Seed is Planted: How a Tweet Became a Book”
In my attempt to stay informed in this modern age of social media, I subscribe to a limited number of platforms where I follow other writers, publishers, agents, publicists, designers, and literary agents. There are so many platforms and folks to follow, that I had to narrow down the places to the four I can manage due to my limited time and, well, patience: Facebook, Instagram, TwitterX, and Pinterest. I can manage these because my daughters taught me how. They literally set up the accounts for me and gave me a quick tutorial on how to operate them. I am not ashamed to admit this:)
This happened one night at a restaurant while we were waiting on dinner to be served. Between ordering and receiving tacos, I was “trained” in the art of social media. They at least let me choose the passwords. More than ten years later, I’m still very appreciative of their help, but they are who decided what platforms I would stand on. They made excellent choices, and it’s worked out okay as far as I’m concerned. Needless to say, they still monitor my postings quite closely. “Mom, did you mean to post that picture of your ear on Facebook this morning?”
I gradually picked up on how to stalk, I mean follow, agents on Twitter and one random day about nine years ago I caught an agent’s tweet that said something along the lines of “Someone needs to write a book about this.” Attached was a link to a newspaper article in the Charleston City Paper about two “nearly forgotten” legends about events that happened in Charleston, South Carolina. To this day, I can’t account for following the link except to say that I believe that story ideas are everywhere, and this one seemed worth the few minutes read. It was.
A really good article by Dustin Waters on October 28, 2015 in the Charleston City Paper recounted two legends that history has swallowed due to their questionable veracity. After all, who gets buried alive and who believes that mermaids really exist? Waters did a great job of retelling the legends and offering modern day considerations such as the extensive research done by scholars on the African American culture at the time following the U.S. Civil War. Not only was my writer’s curiosity peaked, but I was also captivated (pun intended) by the mermaid story and the cultural significance of water spirits to the African American population.
From this article, I learned about the work of historian Ras Michael Brown and his book African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry (Cambridge University Press, 2012.) This is where I was introduced to a category of nature spirits called simbi (also called basimbi and bisimbi) in West-Central African communities. I got the book and was completely enthralled by the research and the cultural discussions of place, religion, and power.
From the article by Waters and the work by Brown, the idea of a mermaid book wouldn’t let go of me. It simmered on my brain’s back burner for four years until I had the time and resources to sit down and knock out the whole story, from outline to first draft, during the pandemic shutdown period of 2020. That’s when I felt like someone who had been snagged from her everyday life and thrown into a room by herself without the privilege of freedom. I felt like a mermaid who had been stolen from her environment, losing hope of surviving captivity, and I wrote her/our story. It’s called The Mermaid Riot.
If you are the agent who made that tweet, thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing The Mermaid Riot.
I needed to write my first fantasy novel to survive the changes and challenges happening in my life during the pandemic. The story of how Mari-Morgan endured and how other people stepped up to save her mirrors my thoughts about what the world experienced with COVID.
Stay tuned for more background, how I twisted the so-called facts of the “mermaid incident” to suit the story, and how I applied literary license to write a fantasy novel about learning to believe what you’re told and when to question it.
Thank you Ras Michael Brown and Dustin Waters. And the mysterious agent:)
I like mermaids because they make waves.
JEH
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The Mermaid Riot is a work of fiction inspired by a true event that happened in Charleston, South Carolina in 1867 which became known as the mermaid riots. Names, dates, and locations have been fabricated to accommodate the plot.
The Mermaid Riot by Joy E. Held is available in ebook and print form from online retailers. Read a sample and purchase here
JOY E. HELD is an author, educator, editor, entrepreneur, and literary citizen responsible for this site and its contents. She is the author of
Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2020)
Writer Wellness Workbook: A Guided Workbook and Journal to Accompany Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2023)
The Mermaid Riot (Fire and Ice YA, 2024) Young Adult Historical Fantasy
She writes spicy historical fiction under a pen name.
She is the winner of multiple writing and book awards:
West Virginia Writers, Inc. Annual Writing Contest, Honorable Mention, Novel, 1998.
New York Book Festival, Honorable Mention, Writer Wellness, 2020.
Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Writer Wellness, 2021.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, Member of the Year, 2020.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, First Book Award, 2020.
She is an adjunct faculty member in the Southern New Hampshire University Online MFA Creative Writing.
She is a proud graduate of Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction.
She is a member of The Authors Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Joy is the founder and CEO of My WRITEDAY Subscription Box for writers and readers.
Loved the opening to the story behind Mermaid Riot. As always you bring in humor, family and that all-important research.