Liz Sauco

I’ve always loved stories. The more fantastical, the better. Unicorns were an early favorite of mine; I must have watched The Last Unicorn a thousand times as a child, driving my parents to near insanity. I journeyed with Bilbo and Frodo to their respective mountains, flew with the dragonriders of Pern, rode with the Heralds of Valdemar (and desperately wanted a Companion. Or a dragon. Any talking animal friend, really). I devoured every book I could get my hands on – trips to Barnes and Noble were hotly anticipated. Anime (thanks, Toonami!) and video games were other favorites. I watched Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Gundam Wing, played Zelda and Mario. Some of my earliest memories are of watching my parents play A Link to the Past and Mario 64. A Link to the Past was the first game I ever finished. I found myself endlessly fascinated with how the Zelda games fit together. Mythology also grabbed me, made me think of how other cultures viewed the world. And then I made up stories for myself when I ran out of media to consume. In college, I decided I was going to write a book. NoNoWriMo was popular, and I had a few other friends who wrote a bit, so I decided I would give it a try in Nov of 2010. I outlined and outlined. My outline was almost twenty pages long (and only about three-quarters of the way through the story) when I decided it was not actually what I wanted to write. It was too much like a video game. I scrapped it, and went back to the drawing board. Then I realized – what if I told the story that came after that one? That would be more interesting. (I missed that NaNoWriMo deadline by quite a bit.) So I started again, worldbuilding with what would have happened in the thousand years between the two stories. I drew maps. I made races. I fleshed out my characters, some of whom were the same – the benefits of writing immortals. By the time NaNoWriMo 2011 came around, I was ready. I wrote three and a half chapters. In that fourth chapter, I introduced my pirate characters – and writing their speech exhausted me so much that I just… stopped. The story sat in the back of my mind for almost a decade, untouched by any actual writing, but living and growing anyway. I consumed more media, more stories. Marvel, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones dominated conversations around me (I mentioned I’m a nerd, right? If not, you could probably tell). I started crocheting little cute plushies. I got a job teaching Latin. Then came 2020. Everyone was staying at home. A friend of mine brought up a book she had been writing some time ago, and I mentioned mine. We decided to give them both another go, offering critique and support to each other as we went. And this time, I successfully wrote Lost Blades, kicking off my journey as an author. I’m excited to embark on this publishing journey, and I’m glad you stopped by to check in!