The Skylark Trilogy is Complete…
Oct 01, 2014 
Order your copy of Lark Ascending:
Indiebound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Today was the release of the final book in my Skylark trilogy, Lark Ascending. Any book launch is a hugely emotional thing—years of work boiling down into one single day, when you send this thing you’ve created out out of your blood and your tears into the world to sink or swim on its own. But releasing the end to a trilogy is even weightier for me, even more overwhelming. I first started telling this story over five years ago and when I think back to where I was five years ago, it’s astonishing how much in my life has changed.
Back then I had just decided to try, really try, for the first time, to fulfill my dream of becoming a writer. I had the support of my family, my friends, and my soon-to-be co-author, Amie Kaufman; I had the knowledge gained from the six-week fiction-writing crash course Odyssey; and I had a nagging idea for a world and a character that wouldn’t leave me alone. I had my ideas and I had my keyboard, and all I really wanted was a chance to see where they’d take me.
Five years later… now, by the end of this year, I’ll have five books on the shelves. I’ve moved countries twice, moved states, attended conferences I never thought I’d get to attend, met and signed with authors—fellow authors!—I’d always dreamed of meeting, and received letters and emails from fans around the world that never stop amazing me, never stop reducing me to a blubbering, emotional blob on the floor. I still wake up at least once a week thinking “…I’m an author. That all actually happened. Is this really my life?”
And yes, there’s bad with the good. This is a rough, rough industry, not for the faint of heart. It’s impossible to come through five years of it totally unscathed.
But, at the end of the day, the most important things haven’t changed. I’ve still got my friends, my family, the support network that lets me keep doing this. And I’ve still got my ideas, and I’ve got my keyboard, and I’ve still got my chance to see where they take me from here. And that’s all I need.
Order your copy of Lark Ascending:
Indiebound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Rather than write a long(er) reflective post about today, I will just put here what I wrote at the end of my acknowledgments in Lark Ascending:
I was on my way back from a book festival the other day and I finally realized why these acknowledgments were such a struggle for me: I wasn’t thanking who I really wanted to thank. Though Skylark certainly wasn’t written in a vacuum, it was written privately; and, to a certain extent, Shadowlark was as well. But by the time I got to the third book in this trilogy, I wasn’t writing it just for me anymore, or even for me and my publisher.
I was writing it for you.
You, who stays up late at night, reading by flashlight. You, who write to me after you finish each book. You, who I’ve never met, and perhaps never will meet, but for a few shared moments spent in this book. It’s your enthusiasm for this story and these characters that has kept me going and pushed me to finish this trilogy. I couldn’t have done it without you. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
So thank you.
4 comments ; ?>/i/tag@2x.png)
Amie Kaufman, books, inspiration, life, odyssey, reflection, release day, skylark, thankful, YA, young adult
Yay! I am halfway through Skylark! I looooovvveeeddd These Broken Stars obviously and it will be nice to read Shadowlark and Larkascending immediately afterwards since they are both out now! Thanks so much, you are awesome! 🙂
wow. I never thought I’d get to tell an author how incredible her book was to me. if not a million people have told you, I loved skylark!!! I have read it over and over again even though I know how it ends-and maybe that’s just the reason. Skylark is…omigod….just one of the,but probably the only,best-written books I have ever read,- and I’m fourteen!! I don’t see the need to explain an authors own book to her just because I get it as much as she does! you have noo clue how I have enjoyed,loved,treasured,sometimes feared and envied how you wrote skylark . books we read always(not bad thing) have one idea-* girl having adventure and falls for second hero boy as they face threat together in fantasy land*. I saw a completely twisted idea of that and I loved it!!!! I sooo dearly wish with all my heart that I could read the sequel Shadowlark and Lark ascending but its probably not around here yet. let me know if it’s in South Africa. I have an ebbing desire. so thank you. thank you for opening up that world to me..
By the way. The fact is is that I read this book three years ago (2012) and still read it up till today. I don’t wanna sound rude but I never knew who you were. Seriously I knew only the famous authors like j.k Rowling and Stephanie Meyer,etc. It was not until I read skylark that I was dumbfounded here.
Or was it 2014?