📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter 6 of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: the Holy Crone's chapter, my sister's question, and the plan I'm pretending I had all along. You can watch the video or read the written version below.

Welcome to the Director’s Cut for Chapter 6!

I’m traveling and I forgot my phone holder, so I recorded this propped up against a wall, crouched to fit in frame, hoping I don’t get back pains later.

Which makes it the perfect theme for this one, both for the chapter and for the grand plan: how much I’m winging it. Sometimes these things can look so polished, so perfect. I don’t know if you feel that way about me, but I’m going to pull back the curtain and tell you what’s really going on here.

Get weird with it

Chapter 6 is one of those other POV chapters. This is one of the things my agent suggested when she said, “Get weird with it.” And then when I did it, she was like, “That’s too weird.”

I have more chapters like this throughout the book from other POVs. I never really expected this to be a multi-POV book, and it’s not in the traditional sense, but you’re going to see a few other characters appear.

It’s funny how, even having written this whole book, I’m still changing and finding and tweaking. Last week, I decided to split Chapter 5 into two. This week, I was going to release Chapter 6 with Chapter 7, and then I decided not to.

Even with something that’s so planned out, I just go with my gut sometimes. That’s how these POV chapters came to me. I wrote them in this stupor, from a distance, and they’ve always stuck that way. I didn’t really revise them much.

So I want to take that chaos and winging it I’m doing with the chapters and step back and talk to you about the grand plan.

Go all-in, or go back into the cave

As you might recall, I had finally geared up and gotten into the mindset that I was going to self-publish this book. I had booked a book cover designer. I had booked an underwater photo shoot. I had picked my birthday as my release date.

And then I had an author friend read the book. He said he loved it, one of his favorite books, but he wanted more. He wanted me to slow it down.

So I hit this checkpoint. Do I go ahead with my release full steam ahead, or do I stop and fully revise this book and flesh it out? To me it was a binary: go ahead, or fully stop, go back into your revising cave, and close the door.

I didn’t have my revising mojo, and I didn’t want to lose my momentum if I stopped. That’s when I came up with the Substack idea: release the 10 chapters of Act One, which is now 11 chapters. Chaos.

And I felt so good about this plan.

“And then what?”

I was sitting with one of my sisters the other day, and she asked, “Hey, so what’s your plan with all of this?”

I told her. “I’m going to do my 10 chapters, and then I’m going to stop and see what I want to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, whether I want to release it as is, or expand it out.” My two binary choices.

“Caroline, that’s not a plan.”

“Yeah, that is my plan.”

“That can’t be your plan. People are excited. You have momentum. You are building people up. They’re going to read all these chapters, hit a cliffhanger, and then you’re going to say goodbye and go write in your writing cave?”

“Mm, yep, that’s the plan.”

So all the people who don’t read the Director’s Cuts are going to think I have a really cool plan, that I’ve always had a really cool plan. But y’all, I’m going to tell you the truth. That was the plan. But now I have an even cooler really cool plan.

You ready to hear it?

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter Five of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the written version below.

Ah, good day. It is time for the Director’s Cut for Chapter 5. I have lost the doohickey for my mic, but we’re gonna continue.

I told my mom I’d kill all the old women

So Chapter 5 is when you really start to see more of the character, the Holy Crone, and she is one of my favorite characters because... well, story time!

Way back in 2019, when I was first drafting this, I lived in San Francisco, and my mom lived a 10-minute walk away. We actually lived together for a while, and then she decided to not have me as her roommate. ( was definitely getting the better end of that bargain.) So she moved out nearby, and I would walk over and have dinner with her once a week.

As a related side note, I was also just starting to date my now husband, David, at the time, and I invited him to one of these weekly dinners with my mom on our third date. Which he then later told me was really early to meet my mom.

And I said, “Well, I love my mom, and she cooks really yummy dinners.” So clearly it worked out, even though supposedly I invited him too early.

But one of these nights at dinner with my mom (David was not in the picture yet), I’m telling my mom about this world and this island. And that they’re gonna have annual sacrifices, so they need to keep procreating, and I say to her, “Well, the girls will have these chores, and then the matrons are gonna be birthing at this rate. But once they hit menopause, I don’t really have a need for them.”

And she’s like, “What? You’re gonna kill all the old ladies?”

I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll probably just banish them. You know, resource scarcity, gotta go.”

And she gets so indignant. She’s like, “You can’t get rid of the old women. I’m important! Look, I’ve taught you things. I’m feeding you right now. You cannot get rid of the old ladies.”

I’m like, “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll keep the old ladies for education and nurturing. Touché.” So I went back, and that’s when I created crones, this idea of this older woman in society. Not exactly groundbreaking, y’all, I know.

But it’s funny, because I kept this comment, this frustration, this how-dare-you from my mother every time I revised the story over the years. And so the crones, these older women crones, slowly became the Holy Crone, the leader. And though my mother is very kind and not a villain, that reaction at the dinner table slowly morphed into... well, as you saw in Chapter 5, the Holy Crone.

So my mother did not demand that I write her into the story as a controlling villain. She just asked to not be killed. But now my mother is the Holy Crone.

My agent said it was too weird

And if you are intrigued by this Holy Crone as much as I am, well, let’s just say next week you’re gonna be getting inside her head. No, really. You’re gonna get a Holy Crone POV. Amazing.

That fully falls in the category of my former agent saying, “Get weird with it.” And I did. And then she didn’t like it and thought it was too weird, and I said, “It’s too late. I love it.” And that’s the version you get.

What the Unholy Waters really are

So something that is revealed in this chapter subtly, but I’m gonna give you the full answer here because this is the director’s cut, is this definition of the Unholy Waters:

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter Four of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: the most unhinged thing I did for book research. You can watch the video or read the written version below.

It is time for the Director’s Cut for Chapter Four.

Away we go!

Here’s one sentence from the chapter that’s gonna lead into a very long story:

“Everything we eat comes from this lagoon. Without it, we’ll starve.”

The most unhinged thing I did for book research

I’m gonna start with what is probably the most unhinged thing I did for this book’s research.

Which is not the free diving course or the spear diving course or going to the Maldives. Because those are all just things I wanted to do. Which, truthfully, this is also something I just wanted to do…

This is not a spoiler, because it is part of the premise that Easla has to venture into the forbidden ocean in search of the sea gods to save her starving village. Well, my friends, if we’re gonna write about a starving village, what do we need to know?

Starvation.

How can I describe hunger if I have never been hungry? And let’s be real, when have you ever actually been truly hungry?

So to answer this question, my boo thing and I did a three-day survival course in Alaska, where the only thing you could bring was a knife, an empty water bottle, and the clothes on your back.

So we go to this course. We actually had to meet up in the city, but they had this really strict rule: if you brought anything that wasn’t allowed, it was contraband. So the group of people we met up with all basically just walked without their phones, without GPS. They looked up how to get there, and we all just showed up with a knife, a water bottle, and the clothes on our backs.

It was already a good start, that we had to learn navigation in order to meet up with our group. Then we went into the forest somewhere, and we ventured off to find a campsite.

What I ate for three days

I’m gonna tell you what I ate for three days, because the guide was nice enough to tell me what was edible.

I ate rose hips. There’s this tiny round part that you can eat. It tastes like starchy carbs, not very much.

And this thing called fireweed that grows by the river, and you can eat the flowers. They’re a little spicy.

So as we’re hiking to find a campsite by the river, we’re gathering flowers, we’re putting them in our pockets, and we’re eating them. It’s not gonna do much.

And when we get to the campsite, the first thing you need to do is make a fire, because you can’t drink the water from the stream until you boil it. So there’s all these steps of: okay, first we need to make a fire, then we need to go fill up our waters, then we need to boil the water, then you need to let it cool off before you can drink it.

So you’re thinking hours in advance before you’re gonna get water. Only once the fire and the water are secure and boiling, then you make your shelter.

So then we’re dragging sticks around, and leaves. You wanna cover the ground because it’s cold. Even though it’s the summer in Alaska, it gets very cold at night, and I followed the rules and didn’t bring any other layers, but someone else brought layers, hmph, and I was cold.

And we built these lean-tos. Keep in mind, you’re not foraging, because you have to get your other priorities in order: having somewhere to sleep, having fire, having water.

You go to bed. Alaska summer, the sun doesn’t set, so it’s very odd, because the sun is up all night.

Over the next two days, we go fishing in the glacier river. No one catches anything. In my defense, I could see in the perfectly clear water there were no fish. And we even set traps. We had to learn how to whittle traps to make a cartoon-character box that would fall on a rodent. I would’ve eaten that rodent, but we didn’t catch one.

The maggoty mushroom

So the only things I found to eat were mushrooms.

I would forage around and I’d find mushrooms, and I’d bring them back to the guide, and half of the mushrooms he’s like, “I’m not sure if these are safe to eat.” So I didn’t risk eating a poison mushroom. I set those aside.

And the mushroom he did know we could eat… I’m gonna tell you something gross, but you’re here, so.

The mushroom had bugs in it. I’m not gonna call them maggots. They were a little skinnier. Like cute, tiny worms. Full of protein, one might say.

And I ate it.

I heated up the mushroom, cooked the worms. I picked some of them out, but there were so many worms, you couldn’t really de-worm it fully, and I ate it.

And what was interesting is other people on the course didn’t wanna eat it. They were treating it more like a cleanse, “Oh, I’m gonna eat in a few days, I’m good.” And I’m like,

So it was very important that I ate the maggoty mushroom.

Too hungry to fight

These feelings, physical and emotional, that I felt during three days went into the book.

But I think the most important takeaway was: you’re so tired, and you’re cranky, and I’d sit there with David to build our fire, or just go get water, and you’re like, “Well, he’s equally tired and hungry, and if he doesn’t do it, if I don’t do it, then we’re not gonna eat.” And so you just gotta do it.

And that was really interesting. Forces some teamwork. No point yelling at each other, even though you want to, because you’re both hungry.

So yes, all I ate for three days were fireweed, rose hips, and a maggoty mushroom.

Campfires are not sexy

Now, may I diatribe here? Oh, yes, I am the editor. I may diatribe here.

I want to talk about the romanticism behind fires. This doesn’t play into my book, but I need you to know.

In fantasy novels, fire tending overnight is always portrayed as so sexy. “Oh, I’m gonna spoon up next to my man by the fire and fall asleep under the stars.”

No, it is not sexy! Let me tell you what really happened.

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter Three of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the written version below.

It’s time for Chapter 3’s director’s cut. Ready to dive in?

Every draft, rearranged

While planning what to talk about for this scene, I went back to my very first draft. I hadn’t looked at it in years. I thought I remembered it. I did not.

The beats have stayed surprisingly similar, but everything has been rearranged.

There was always this village. There was always going to be a ceremony of the girls and an offering of the boys. But I rewrote it every which way. I have scenes where she’s given to a Prime. Scenes where she’s trying to stop the offering of her own baby brother. Scenes where her mother is still around and gets banished on the page.

At the very beginning, watching everything happen? Or later, after the banishment, after the relationship with Relfy has already been destroyed, so that everything lost is something she’s looking back on?

There’s no one right way. Think about telling a story at the dinner table. Do you go A to Z, or do you jump in and fill in as you go? We all know the person who gives every unnecessary detail. “It was Fri—Well, actually it was a Thursday. And it was…Was it raining?” And you’re like, “Come on, get to it!!”

So when do you add details, and when do you skip them? I told you I’d release these chapters as-is, exactly as they were already written. But for this chapter, and every chapter I’ve released so far, I’ve actually been adding more. Hee-hee, why not?

“Be weird. Go for it.”

My first agent wanted me to cut, cut, cut, cut. She wanted the book fast & snappy, because it was YA.

When she first read it, she gave me an R&R (a revise and resubmit). I rewrote the book, resubmitted it, and she signed me. Then she said we needed one more rewrite, and after that, a polish. But for that rewrite, she said, “Be weird. Go for it.”

Because that original version? It is so YA. She’s playing with her friends in the canoe. They’re fishing, gathering for a feast, wondering which boys they’ll be paired with, teasing each other. Very much girl drama.

This latest version?

A friend read it recently. I’d always called it YA, and both of my agents repped it as YA. And he said, “Caroline, this is not YA. This is a really heavy book. This is dark. You hit some pretty heavy topics pretty quick.”

That’s when I realized all my beta readers have been women in their 30s and 40s. Young adults have never actually read this book. And comparing the first draft to now, it’s like…  Caroline must have been going through a dark time because 2019 Caroline to now just got progressively more intense with this book.

My kind of longing

Which reminds me. One time my agent said, “This is good. There’s a lot of violence, a lot of intensity. What if you added a little more romance?” I don’t really like writing on-page romance. It’s just my preference. So she said, “You don’t have to do romance, but what if you added a little more longing?”

I’m like, “longing?!” By then I’d had so many rejections and done so many rewrites. I wasn’t feeling romantic. I was feeling violent.

So I told my critique group, “My agent wants more longing. Let me get back to you.” I rewrote the first few chapters and sent them over. One of them messaged me: “Caroline, are you okay?”

“Yeah, feel great. Why?”

I was really pleased with that spear stabbing. There was a squelch, a great sound for a spear stabbing. But alas, I un-stabbed that person, because they wanted more longing.

And that’s part of how this character Relfy came to be.

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter 2 of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the transcript below. Same content, and don’t worry, I brought pictures!

🔒 The video is only for In the Cave members, but I saved you the first half of the transcript below!

Subscribe now

Hello there. Are you excited for the Director’s Cut for Chapter Two? I am.

And don’t worry, I brought my notes.

A scene I wrote in a day

What’s funny about Chapter Two is this draft was from 2023, I had an agent at the time, and I remember this so specifically because I had a speaking event coming up. It was going to be the very first event that I was invited to read my chapter at, and I had my chapter locked. It was going to be Chapter One.

And then my agent wanted a chapter showing the relationship with the little sister. Because I believe originally I had Easla going straight to the offering.

There wasn’t that palm tree moment.

And I wrote this scene in a day. Because I knew the world so well, I was like, “Okay, my agent wants to see the little sister. She wants to see the world. Let’s look what happens.” She comes off the dock. Oh, there’s little girls. She comes off here. Oh, this happens. And it was so easy to have her just explore the village.

But it’s funny, because I have scenes that I’ve revised and revised, and then I have scenes like this where I just — one and done. I wrote this scene, and then I went and read it at this speaking event the next week. Usually I’ve revised my scenes and polished them, and I was just like, “I’m going to read this brand new scene instead.”

And so I really remember that, because I think it’s interesting: some scenes need so much work and changing, and this scene just came out and stayed as-is.

All the intonations and a sore throat

Another funny thing is my mom and one of my sisters were in town. They weren’t there for the event. They were there a week before, and I made them listen to me reread my chapter over and over again. Not for the content, but to practice how I would speak.

Bless their hearts. Thank you for family. I think I reread the same sentence with five different intonations, and they sat there on the couch and nodded and were so supportive.

And then I lost my voice, because I was trying to sound a certain way. I am not a voice actor, but I was clearly straining my throat, and then I had a sore throat from practicing trying to sound cool.

So now this is my voice. I’ve learned I’m just going to speak with my voice.

But I almost sounded really cool until I hurt my throat.

Multiple courses on lobsters for one line

There’s a sentence right in the opening that talks about her grabbing her sister’s hand like she’s grabbing for a lobster in the rocks.

And again, it’s just one line, but I need you to know that I went lobstering.

And it’s so cool how these experiences can then come into one single line. For some people maybe that doesn’t mean much. But when you’re lobstering, they move so quickly away that when you see one, you just have to go for it. If you reach for it tentatively, it’s going to scoot away.

So you have to just — gah — and grab it. And it’s kind of scary in the moment, and then it squeaks at you and makes this clicking sound. But you just have to commit.

I did a lobstering course here in San Diego at this local reserve, and it was so much fun, and I’m catching all of them. But you can’t keep them, because it’s a protected reserve. And I think the lobsters knew that. They were really chill. So I’m grabbing all these lobsters. I’m feeling so confident.

And then David and I have our anniversary coming up, and I’m like, “For our anniversary, let’s go lobstering,” as one does.

And we book a guide. He takes us to an area where we can actually keep the lobster, and we bring a cooler. I’m ready. And I think we barely saw any lobsters, and when we did, they all swam away, because they’re not safe there.

And so we got zero lobsters.

So I think I need to go back to the reserve.

There you go. Multiple courses on lobsters for one line. You just gotta grab them.

The fraying rope of her nerves

Something I really had fun with in this book is thinking about her frame of view, her reference for describing things. She has no technology. She wouldn’t use the same words we would. So when she’s frustrated — like this line, “the fraying rope of her nerves” — it was fun to filter everything through her world.

You’ll see as she talks, everything is anchored by water, and ocean, and the tasks she does. And it’s really fun to play with that later, when we go underwater, and these people would use completely different words than her.

So, just geeking out a little on words.

You cannot cut the braid

There’s this line about “the braid is the seaweed,” and that came to me as I was creating this religion. There’s so many fun things to pull from, but I used to study in Mainland China, and around Lunar New Year, there is this superstition that when you’re eating noodles, you shouldn’t cut them, because the noodle represents longevity and long life. And if you cut it, especially around Lunar New Year, that’s really bad luck.

And so on this island, they have this annual harvest of seaweed. They worship the gods. And they wear their hair in this long braid to represent the seaweed, and you cannot cut the braid.

And it’s funny to think about these little belief systems, and how they come from real things. That there may be similar beliefs across different countries, whether it’s religious or superstitious.

Zhúzi, Joot

Joot is based on a real drink: actual fermented bamboo sap. They drink it in East and Southern Africa, and it’s called ulanzi.

And I called it joot. I didn’t realize how much I pulled from Chinese, but in Chinese, bamboo is zhúzi (竹子).

So I just — zhúzi, jute. joot.

The Holy Crone’s face

I’ll talk more about the Holy Crone in a future chapter. But in terms of that description of her face: you’ll notice she’s described as being really old, with folds of skin and sun damage. And then she’s also mentioned as being 40-something cycles old, 40-something harvests old.

Which — you’re like, “Wait, she’s only 40? She’s young 40s and she looks like that?”

Upgrade to In the Cave to keep reading:

• Why the Holy Crone looks like that — the real photo that inspired her face

• The mangrove throne — the real chair I sat in, and why Easla gets weird about chairs later

• The character name one reader didn’t get — you tell me if it’s obvious

• My 2019 notebook, including population math, a remote island I forgot I researched, and a page that just says “Incest!! To fix.”

• The one piece of writing advice I’d give anyone starting a first draft

• The love interest I forgot I’d named Fletcher — and a surprise guest appearance

Plus the full video.

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🌊 Chapter One of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA went out last Saturday. Read it (or listen to the audio version 🔊) now if you haven’t yet!

📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter 1: the research, the rabbit holes, the drawings I hadn’t looked at since 2019, and all the stuff that shows up (even if just one line) in the book. You can watch the video or read the transcript below. Same content, and don’t worry, I brought pictures!

Hi, this is our very first Director’s Cut.

Are you excited? I am. I even brought notes.

Before we dive into the behind the scenes of the first chapter of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, I’d like to say: sharing a chapter for free to everyone I know on my newsletter is way scarier than when I was planning on self-publishing this book. It feels so much more intimate, because I know exactly who’s on this list, who could see this chapter. And it’s free, which means anyone can read it. Which is a great thing, but also scary.

As you read this first chapter, remember that I wrote this book in four acts and I got feedback from a very trusted reader saying they think it should be a series, not one book. So I’m going to split it into four books — which means as you read, give feedback, give comments, tell me what you’re liking, what you want more of, where you’re bored, where you’re confused. That’s going to help me as I revise into this new version.

I’m going to give you some fun nuggets throughout the scene. And if any of them really interest you, let me know and I can do a deep dive on these topics.

“Maybe you should write the book first”

I came up with this book in 2019 — and I actually hadn’t come up with the book yet.

I told a really good friend that I was going to quit my job to write a book. I was coming up to the end of this massive three-year change management project at LinkedIn. It was naturally ending, and I said, “I’m going to leave and write a book.”

And my dear friend said, “Maybe you should write the book first.”

So this was October. Did some Googling, and I found out there was this November National Novel Writing Month. All it meant — it’s a group competition, very friendly, where you write a book.

I didn’t have an idea for a book.

Feeding a 200-pound bass and wondering what to write about

I was volunteering at the San Francisco Aquarium as a scuba diver. I was a dive volunteer in the shark tank. I would feed the sharks, feed the bat rays, feed this massive bass — gosh, she was like 200 pounds. It was amazing. I loved it. I would have paid to do it.

I’m a good businesswoman, so I did it for free.

And it was October, so it was very cold. I’m wearing a seven millimeter wetsuit, hood, gloves. It’s freezing, and I’m in this perfectly clear water with guaranteed fish sighting. And I’m floating in there and I’m thinking, “What am I going to write my book about?”

The competition people suggested: write about what you love. Well, I grew up in Florida. I love the ocean. I can name so many fish.

So as I’m floating there, feeding this massive bass, I decide I want to write about the ocean. I want to write about climate change. I want to write about the beauty of the ocean.

But then I’m like, okay, well, if I want to write about climate change — that’s not a beautiful ocean. That’s an ugly ocean.

And you don’t want to scare people without giving them the hope.

So as I’m floating there, I get this idea for two worlds. This climate devastated world, and this beautiful, pristine ocean world. Manufactured a little bit, like the aquarium I’m in.

The movie that convinced me I was being watched

As a side note, I will say: growing up, I — I’m not going to say loved — was traumatized by The Truman Show.

I watched it as a kid, and for years after I was convinced I was in The Truman Show. And my poor parents. I would go into the bathroom and talk to myself and be like, “Ha ha. I know you’re watching me. Ha. There you are!” I would look at pillows, I would look in the mirror, and I would always perform as though someone was watching me. Because of this dang movie, The Truman Show.

So let’s combine these worlds — this ruined world, this beautiful ocean world, and a little bit of Truman Show. And that’s what became my book.

The folder I hadn’t opened since 2019

I pulled out this folder that I haven’t looked at since probably 2019, 2020. I’m going to show you some drawings.

I am not an artiste. But you can see this is my beautiful village — houses on stilts, canoes, and a free diver.

Two minutes of holding my breath in Tulum

I actually took free diving classes for this book. I went down to Tulum, Mexico with my boo thing — and was it a vacation, or was it torture?

She basically would put us in the pool and put her hand over our head. And as your body runs out of oxygen, you get this thing called the urge to breathe. It’s mentioned in the chapter — where your body actually spasms. If you’re not used to it, you panic and you try to breathe. But free divers can actually push through that spasm. You can have that urge to breathe two or three times, maybe more, and still hold your breath. And it really is because your body’s not used to the high CO2 concentration as you’re using your oxygen.

So David is face down in the pool. I’m face down in the pool. We’re both spasming.

And that was a beautiful vacation.

I actually held my breath for two minutes, and then we went into the cenotes, and I dove down to 60 feet on the first day. Y’all, anything is possible. Professional free divers can go way deeper for way longer. It is so cool.

As you read the chapter, you’ll hear these mentions of the urge to breathe. It’s that spasming, the mental tricks of how you distract yourself. And then even when you come up, there’s a very specific recovery breath process so that you don’t pass out. As you come to the surface, you’re always supposed to grab onto something, because you can get these shallow water blackouts right when you come up and your lungs expand.

There’s so much I could talk about here. It’s funny, because this research I did only shows up as like a sentence or two in the book.

But I know all the knowledge.

I am the iceberg, y’all.

Also, it was a business expense and it was very fun.

The tiny fish I killed, and the sunburn I earned

I also did spearfishing courses. I did one in San Diego where it’s a Hawaiian sling — it’s basically a stick, but you have a rubber at the end so you could make it bounce a little. It’s not like a big spear gun.

So I did that. I think I killed, like, one fish, that was this big. Hurt my ego a little bit.

Then I went down to Mexico with a spear gun, and I loved it. It was so good. David and I went for a half day, and we’re wearing these half wetsuits. And I loved it so much that at half day, I said, “Can we keep going?” So we paid, and we did the full day.

And at the end of the day — well, first, we had a ton of yummy fish, and we went to the marina, and they cook it up for you at the restaurant, so it was so good.

But we were also so sunburned. Because you’re floating on your stomach in the water looking for fish, and when you see them, you dive down. You’re freediving. It’s exhausting. It’s a sport, because you’re not scuba diving as you do it. So you’re diving down, you’re trying to find the fish, you’re trying to shoot them — but when you’re on the top, the sun was just cooking my legs.

I’ve never had a calf sunburn except for that time, and it was a red line.

The sun clock nobody cared about but me

This one is one of my research rabbit hole failures. Aw, poor me.

It’s in pencil, so it’s going to be hard to see. But I mapped out a sundial. Because how are these people going to tell time in this primitive society with no technology? So I researched sundials and how I would build one, and I looked up the latitude and longitude of my island.

You can see — 6:00 AM, summer solstice, equinox. Because it changes during the year. They’re very complicated.

So I had, like, a whole two paragraphs explaining this clock.

And no one cared as much as I did.

But if I’m ever stranded on an island, I will — no. I don’t remember this, actually. This was years ago.

So I ended up cutting the sun clock, because it was really complicated, and no one really cared enough that my sun clock would change during the wet season and the dry season and the winter solstice. And how do I even use the words for that?

Instead, I found another primitive time-telling technique where you use your hand relative to the sun — how many fingers from the horizon, and how many hands, was a way of telling time.

So in the first chapter, there’s someone who brings their hand up to see how long it’s been, and they’ll mention fingers and hands. That’s a time-telling technique. You can see relative to earlier how much the sun has moved.

A village on stilts, and the UN project it came from

Like I said, I’m building this above-water, no-technology village. It’s really not an island. It’s just stilt houses and walkways, because there’s no land left.

Here’s my atoll. That’s the coral atoll. Here’s my village of grids and walkways and canoes and huts.

But the coolest part is that I researched and found this United Nations project proposing mangrove villages that looked very similar, and they had suggestions for how to build these coastal villages and use mangroves to protect from erosion.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida. We went to Southwest Florida a lot, and there’s all these mangrove islands. So finding this village mock-up of these mangrove islands was exactly what I wanted.

And so that is what this is based off of — basically an island of walkways protected by mangroves.

The crabs my dad knocked onto my head

In that first chapter — again, it’s only a line — but she canoes through this mangrove tunnel.

Where I grew up, there were these mangrove tunnels, and we would go canoe through them, and they’d be covered with these tiny little brown mangrove crabs. And we’d scream, because if you touched them they’d all fall down on your head. So of course my dad would hit the paddle and make them all fall down on our head.

I originally had that in the scene, and now all you get is a mangrove tunnel and some crabs later.

But I just need you to know that that is from real life. Crabs falling on my head.

Everything that grows on this island

This is another point where I researched too hard, because I decided I needed to know every single possible material available on the island in order for them to be self-sustaining.

So at one point, I defined their entire ecosystem.

• Mulberry for tea, wine, barkcloth, berries, baskets. I haven’t looked at this in years.

• Bamboo — you can make canteens, spears, cups, chopsticks, fish traps, rope.

• Mangroves — boundary protection, you use it around your plantings, roof, rope. I can’t read a lot of my writing, actually.

• Palm — coconuts, the oil, the husk, the leaves.

I basically made sure that I knew everything that grew on this island so that they could build all of the things they needed to build. Which involved YouTube videos where I learned how to make rope out of coconut husk, because I was like, “If I’m going to mention rope, I need to make sure they can make rope.”

Again, it’s not on the page. But I need you to know that I can — well, I can’t, actually. I’ve never tried it physically. But I know it’s possible to build rope out of coconut husk. It’s just like this, right? Easy.

What were other YouTube videos I watched? Okay. I watched one for a conch call. Brr. I watched it like six times on repeat so I could describe what a conch sounded like. So David comes home and I’m just blasting brr, brr, this conch call over and over again.

And of course, again, it doesn’t even make it in the book. I just tell you there’s a conch call.

But brr. So cool.

And then I also learned how to climb a palm tree. Again, theoretically — I haven’t tried it myself. But I actually watched videos of people using these climbers, these strips of fabric between their feet to keep them tight, and then just hopping up a tree. Just going up it.

So I feel like I can climb a palm tree. Like, if someone needs a coconut and gives me a climber, I will try. But I can describe it in detail thanks to YouTube.

Y’all — everything you want is on YouTube. People do a lot of things and record it! ( As evidenced by me, here)

Named after a sea slug

Another fun one I want to mention, and I love this, because it shows how important little comments that people will say can change a whole story.

Originally, my main character was named Eugenie, after this marine biologist who — I think — queen of the sharks. Gosh, I’m forgetting my own research. And Relfy was named So Yun, because she’s named after a Korean astronaut.

I’m telling David about this, multiple drafts in, and he says: “How would your island with no history and context of race and countries — how would they know to name her the Korean word So Yun?”

And I’m like, “Well, shit. They wouldn’t.” They would have a completely different naming convention.

And that’s how I came up with naming them after fish. So Easla is named after a sea slug. Relfy is named after a squirrelfish. Dams is damselfish.

I was like, “There’s finally a use of me being able to name every fish ever!”

It was so fun. But how cool is that — that someone flagging this “wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense in your world” helped me pivot to something that really deepens the world and shows you how ocean-focused they are.

He didn’t come up with that idea. But he flagged that it was off, and then I came up with that.

The Mandarin Chinese word I couldn’t stop thinking about

Another fun one, on the social hierarchy side, is given to.

I have studied Mandarin Chinese since eighth grade, and I forget which year this would’ve been, but I learned the word — shoot, I was going to look up the tones before this, but I didn’t — I learned the word jià gěi.

Jià gěi means to be married, but it’s specific to a woman. So if a man and a woman are married together, it’s jiéhūn le. They got married. But if a woman marries a man, she is jià gěi the man. She is given to. Gěi means to give. So jià gěi — she’s given in marriage to this man. But when they’re married, it’s jiéhūn le.

And I remember being really thrown off by that.

Look, this isn’t against Chinese. Most languages have some type of gender nuance here. But I was like: “Why do I have to be given in marriage? Why can’t I be married? Why does the man get a different word than me? I don’t like my word.”

And that really stuck with me.

So as I created this island and the hierarchies, and accounted for different factors that you’ll learn about as you read the book — well, if this is happening to the island, how would it affect these dynamics?

And part of it became this dynamic that the women are given to the men. That phrase is just my direct translation from Chinese, that they are given to in marriage. They are jià gěi le.

But again — words mean a lot. So if you’re going to give them to, how does that affect everything else in society?

May It, May We

That’s just a quick top of my head. As I read through the chapter, I wrote notes on fun things I wanted to show you. That is most of them.

The one I would end with is that the title of this book actually changed.

The original title was MAY IT PLEASE THE SEA — it referring to the sacrifice. They’re trying to please the sea with the annual sacrifice.

And as I wrote the story and realized the themes of this girl — which is not a spoiler, because you can tell it in the first chapter — she is so committed to pleasing others and following the rules and blending in.

So it’s not it. It’s actually we. May WE please the sea.

Who are we when we’re not trying to please society, and the gods, and whoever holds the power?

That creepy prayer, I’ve had since draft one. I think on the first page I sat down and was like, “I’m going to write a creepy prayer.”

And now it has evolved to:

That was your director’s cut for Chapter One of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA. I hope you liked it.

If any of this interested you, obviously I have a lot more knowledge on these topics — so let me know what you want me to dig more into.

🌊❤️, Caroline

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