Explore the Twelve Tyrants Series

Growing up in the suburbs of Wisconsin, Lydia’s formative years involved playing in the snow, reading reams of books, catching toads, and similarly inspiring activities. Along with these, she also developed the peculiar habit of carrying a notebook everywhere she went, secluding herself in the corners of public spaces, and scribbling stories by the dozen. Often she drew forth parental rebuke for hiding behind written pages rather than socializing, but she simply smiled (or, more probably, glared) and grew more devoted to the penning of pocket worlds. 

Soon, Lydia was an elementary school master of fantasy (... if "mastery" allows for borrowing characters and ideas from one's favorite authors). As her experience increased, she began handwriting longer and more original stories, until one day she created her first pseudo-novel: a rambling tale uninspiringly titled Sea Dragon (which bears no connection to The Scales Within, and is better off spared from the light of day). Proud of her work, Lydia guarded it as jealousy as a dragon at its lair... until one fateful day when her cousin cajoled her into lending it out for a time. Remarkably, Lydia's cousin grew invested in this story and pushed for a sequel, which Lydia obligingly wrote. Though that story was nearly as dreadful as the first, it exercised Lydia’s writing muscles, and her cousin's enthusiasm inspired her to create a brand new, twelve-book-long fantasy series: the Twelve Tyrants.

First, Lydia brainstormed a dozen hybrid creatures and a realm for each one. She then selected a tyrant and a realm, invented a maurader named Lythimore, whipped up some other characters, and tossed them into a notebook to see what would happen. Needless to say, this first draft (called Swirler) was a mess bereft of plotting, plagued by many contrived rescues, and riddled with characterization issues.

Thrilled by what she perceived as a triumph, Lydia proceeded to write the rest of the series. Though the following books improved as she learned how to outline ahead of time, the series remained a jumble of poor pacing, contrivances, and confused plot sequences that eventually necessitated the excision of two of the twelve books. Fortunately for her series, around middle school she moved with her family to Florida, whose tropical climate fueled her imagination with worldbuilding wonders.

With her promotion to high school, Lydia's passion for writing flamed alarmingly high. She penned a Twelve Tyrants prequel called The First Lightvian Traitor, produced her then-longest story (722 handwritten college-ruled pages), attempted to write a sequel series for Twelve Tyrants, wisely quit the attempt, assessed her first books, and decided that there was another project here in the making: unearthing the gold buried beneath the Twelve Realms' original slag. Hence, she embarked on a quest to rewrite the entire Twelve Tyrants Series, pausing only to pen a 1,438-page saga when Octopath Traveler borrowed her attention.

In her life on Earth, between writing and editing, Lydia may be found reading ancient or fantastical literature, cultivating a social life, and likewise adventuring through college.