Explore the Twelve Tyrants Series

Growing up in the suburbs of Wisconsin, Lydia’s formative years were spent playing in the snow, reading books, weeding the garden, walking to the library, going on extensive family bike rides, and playing video games. However, she also took interest in the less mundane activities of carrying a notebook everywhere she went and writing stories by the dozen. More than once she drew rebuke from her parents for hiding behind written pages rather than socializing — but if anything, this only made her more defiant, and her love of writing grew. 

Soon, Lydia was a master of wild fanfiction and fantasy. As her experience increased, she began producing longer, more original stories — all of them handwritten —  until eventually 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 kept from the light of day). Extremely proud of her work, Lydia guarded it jealously, until one fateful day when her cousin Anna cajoled her into lending it out for a time. Somehow, Anna grew attached to this disjointed story and pushed for a sequel, which Lydia obligingly wrote. That story was nearly as bad as the first, but it exercised Lydia’s writing muscles, and Anna's enthusiasm inspired her to create a brand new, twelve-book-long fantasy series. Thus, the Twelve Tyrants were born. 

It started when Lydia brainstormed up a dozen hybrid creatures and a realm for each one. From there, she began gathering ideas for other inhabitants of this world and created a main character by the name of Lythimore. She then selected a tyrant and a realm, whipped up some other characters, and tossed them together to see what would happen. Needless to say, the first draft of The Scales Within was a mess without plotting, plagued by many contrived rescues and riddled with characterization issues.

After this early The Scales Within, Lydia proceeded to write the rest of the series. Though the proceeding books gradually improved as she learned to plot ahead of time, the series was still a jumble of poor pacing, contrivances, and confused plot sequences that eventually necessitated the excision of two of the twelve books. When at last the original ten-book series was complete, Lydia suffered a long period of writer's block and went dry of good writing for quite some time. In the midst of middle school, she moved with her family to Florida, where she enjoyed the tropical temperatures and gradually rekindled her authorial spark. 

With her promotion to high school, Lydia's passion for writing returned with a vengeance. She penned an original Twelve Tyrants prequel, produced one of her longest stories to date (722 handwritten, college-ruled pages long), and, after assessing her old books, decided that there was some gold hidden among the slag. Thus, she embarked on a quest to rewrite and publish the entire Twelve Tyrants Series... however long it may take. 

Between writing and editing, Lydia may be found reading ancient and fantastical literature, cultivating a social life, and otherwise enjoying college to the fullest.