Melissa Grant Writes

I’m not entirely sure how I got from that moment of white-hot annoyance to deciding to write a children’s book.

I don’t have children, and I am decidedly NOT young child-friendly. Call me crazy, but I prefer kids at that weird hormonal 14-year-old stage.

I always had it in the back of my head that I could write a book, at least subject-wise, but I hadn’t yet found a topic that inspired me.

Until Cloudia.

Writing news on the daily has made me incredibly fast and efficient. While I was still walking dogs, I could write an entire article in my head, come home and get it down in 20 minutes.

Usually, titles and first lines can inspire the entire thing. If it feels good, the entire piece flows. My first title was problematic; more on that later, but my first line felt GOOD.

“It was her ninth birthday, and the sky had the nerve to be blue.”

I started off building my cast of characters. I still have no idea if this is the correct way to write a book, but it’s the way I wrote one. Since Cloudia was me, all the other characters came from people in my life, past and present. Some obvious, some veiled (protecting the not-so-innocent).

I envisioned it as a series from the very beginning, even though I had no idea what it was about. Again, not sure why. By now you must be able to tell this is how I roll: no plan, just vibes.

Immediately, I knew I wanted the names to reflect weather and nature. Yes, yes, still no idea what I’m writing about, but building a cast of characters from my life. Weird, right? So I started researching nature and weather names.

My core cast was Cloudia, sister Poppy, mom Rose, dad Storm, twin best friends Sunny Rae and Daisy June (later changed to Kaia and Lumi, because, eww, too cutesy) and her scruffy black dog, Gloom.

I looped back to the title at this point, and after consulting perhaps 25 other reading humans, settled on (here’s where it gets problematic) Cloudia with a Chance of Darkness.

What the heck was wrong with us?

And that particular issue went on for an embarrassing LONG time. I read the book back in the day; I KNEW it existed. I have no excuse other than it’s a damn good title, and somehow it got lodged in my psyche, which then tried to steal it.

Meatballs anyone?

I had my title, or so I thought, and my cast of main characters; now I needed a setting. Clearly, it had to be the place I knew so well. The area of the Snoqualmie Valley in which I live (according to NOAA, but don’t quote me) gets around 80 inches of precipitation per year.

Cloudia’s idea of heaven, and honestly? Mine too. But I mean, she is me, and I am she.

Then I had an epiphany of sorts: my whole life, on the days around my birthday (in July of all things, thanks, universe!), when it was unbearably hot, I wished it would rain. What if Cloudia had magical powers to make it rain when it was sunny?

*insert evil laugh*

But how? How is this goofy little nine-year-old doing this?

Maybe she’s older, and this power is triggered by that odd period of time right before girls transition into womanhood. Ok, eleven, but still, how?

I loved mythology as a child, so I started searching for weather and nature deities, which opened up my whole tale, gave me more names to work with, and led me to start working on a basic plot.

Remember when I said I work fast? Well, perhaps there is some kind of undiagnosed syndrome or disorder at work in my brain that I’m unaware of that explains me better, but once I got started, I had a rough ROUGH draft done in about three months.

Oh, and the dog is immortal because they all should be.